Shougeki
by Esoteria
Summary: Late one night during Tessa's vacation to Jindai, Sousuke tells the story of one of his first missions with Mithril and the agent from the Information Division that he worked with. An action. Third of three independent volumes.
1. Chapter 1: Suppressed Gunfire

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

_Author's Note: This fanfiction, Shougeki, is of the action genre and is the third Full Metal Panic fiction that I've done. The first is a romance, Wo Futari De. The second is a comedy, Hitosawagase. These can be read in any order, but the order in which they were written is encouraged._

_Please take note of Chapter 0 of Wo Futari De, which gives a full explanation of FMP's history and how my fanfiction fits into them._

_I hope you enjoy Shougeki. Please give me some feedback in the form or reviews or e-mails, as these are highly encouraging (even--or especially--when they contain criticism)._

_-Eso_

_Update 09/06/2006 -- Fixed a typo as mentioned by a reviewer (thanks, easysecond!).  
_

Chapter 1

----

He had already broken a sweat. The Kevlar jacket Sousuke was wearing had only increased the discomfort. As a result of this, he couldn't stop breathing hard. He knew he had to stay quiet, but no matter how many times he swallowed, he was still audible.

This could prove to be either a help or his demise. If Corbin was indeed on the other side of the wall, he'd know that it was him—that it was Sousuke. But if the events of the last few days had meant anything, Corbin might not expect him to be breathing so hard this early.

Still, this was the right place, and—Sagara checked his watch yet again—the right time. In their rush to make this plan, neither had discussed a way of identifying themselves to the other. Sousuke could only think of one solution.

**Scrape, scrape, tap-tap-tap.** He dragged the tip of the suppressor against the concrete twice, and then tapped it three times. The metal-on-concrete sounds echoed off of the walls. This was it. If it was Corbin, he'd show himself now. If it was an enemy, it'd be whoever had the fastest trigger finger that came out alive.

Sagara waited. He heard movement on the other side of the wall. Suddenly, a hand flashed around the corner. There was a silver ring on it. After a moment, a body followed the hand.

Sousuke stepped to one side to make room.

"You scared the crap out of me, you know that?" Corbin let his head touch the wall as he caught his own breath.

"Good thing you weren't in the habit of calling me Sagara."

"Yeah, good thing. I'd have shot you before you got to the first 'A'. Plus you'd probably have reduced the accuracy by a few percent with all that tapping."

"Enough of this. How is your end?" Sousuke looked over at him. He had his weapon at his shoulder. Before Corbin even said anything, his demeanor and stance told Sagara he had met heavy resistance.

"Let's just say it's a miracle that I'm here on time and without a dozen exit wounds."

"Will we proceed as planned?"

"Yeah. But give me your extra magazine. I'm down to three rounds."

The words were staggering. Sousuke could only remove the magazine from his belt and hand it to Corbin with a look of disbelief. "Then—?"

"Yeah. We need to move."

"Roger. I'll see you at the extraction point."

Corbin nodded, and reloaded his Beretta. The black metal pistol construction matched his custom-made combat suit. Even in this situation, he wore solid black.

Sousuke smelled cordite when Corbin disappeared behind him the way that he had come. Unloading twenty-eight rounds before this point had been no exaggeration. When Sagara lowered his own weapon, his wrist touched something on his belt.

"Wait!" He said as loudly as he dared. Corbin appeared a moment later. "This."

Sousuke produced a small black cylinder, which Corbin looked at in surprise. "A flashbang? How did you get—?"

"I'll tell you later. Make good use of it." Sousuke dashed across the ramp to the opposing wall.

"An M84… like old times." With that, Corbin disappeared once again.

Sagara took a deep breath. He was never trained for this. He couldn't stop thinking that someone was right around the next corn—Sousuke froze and pressed hard against the wall. He wasn't imagining anything. There really were footsteps coming from behind him and to the left.

----

Corbin's infiltration had turned into an assault. Both young men knew before they started that even if they both survived, one would probably be captured. Mithril's denial of further backup remained a mystery, but Corbin could only do his job. He was about to round the next corner. The past ninety seconds had been the longest bout of silence since the check in that morning. He was beginning to feel the proverbial itchy trigger finger, and while a "silenced" pistol still made considerable noise for various reasons, he was no longer worried about being discovered. That had already happened. He was worried about running out of ammunition.

What he had briefly passed off as ambient noise was getting louder and louder. He was approaching the next ramp in the parking deck, which consisted of an incline followed by a hairpin turn to the right and a second incline to move from the fourth to the fifth level. He was approaching from the right side, so he could hear it clearly: The enemy wasn't being subtle any longer. The sounds of three—maybe four—stomping footsteps passed over Corbin's head.

He was nearing his destination, but this ramp was the safest way up—until now. There was no room to dash for cover. A deserted parking deck had very few places to hide, and judging by the caliber of the weapons the enemies had attempted to use against him up to this point, the support pillars in the middle would only create a cloud of concrete dust once they had taken a few rounds. Being in the middle of a cloud of dust may have been an advantage in most situations, but in such an open area the enemy would simply wait him out.

Corbin dashed under the elevated turn in the ramp, ducking slightly to enter the pitch black shadows. With their own noise, the enemy would not know he was now waiting to ambush them.

The footsteps stopped directly above him.

_Are they using infrared!_ Corbin couldn't think of their stopping point as a coincidence. The turn they were now silently standing on was tactical suicide. Even one man—a man like Corbin—could take them out provided some decent cover if they were simply standing around. Aside from infrared, Corbin could only start thinking of a small list of other reasons, with heartbeat sensors being near the top of it.

It slowly dawned on him that if the enemy knew his position, they'd have already come down and killed him. He was outnumbered and vastly outgunned, and they knew it. There was only one logical conclusion: They were waiting on _him_. It suddenly seemed so obvious. They knew he was on this level, because they had already locked down every stairwell. The only way up was this ramp. They would simply wait him out. And he didn't have the time to try to win a stamina battle.

Corbin slowed his breathing and began to think.

Several moments passed.

_I'm stuck._ He looked at his watch. _I'm totally stuck; they'll throw off our timing entirely_. Sousuke would be making his way across to the other building by now. His route was restricted to a single path just like Corbin's was. Corbin could only hope Sagara wasn't as utterly stymied.

**Click.** There was a distinct metal sound that came from above. It sounded like a pin being pulled. Corbin couldn't help the fear that he had been wrong in his assessment. Perhaps they really were using infrared or a heartbeat sensor, and they were about to drop a grenade right in front of him.

He heard faint voices from above. He could make them out barely.

"Is it ready?"

"Yeah"

"Attach the wire."

A pair of feet shuffled quietly to the top of the lower ramp. Corbin heard some more clicking. After a moment the others started moving. He was sure now that it was only three enemies. "_Only three_," he thought sarcastically, _what kind of idiot thinks the word "only" in this situation?_

"GO! GO!" The leader of the small squad shouted suddenly. The three stomped down the ramp to Corbin's level and spread out quickly, each slowly walking toward a different area of the parking deck, with assault rifles shouldered.

"He could be anywhere, guys. You all heard how many he's taken down already."

"Heheh…," one soldier dropped his aim. "He's using a pistol. We don't have anything to worry about." He slapped the rifle against the LEXAN shield which was attached to his other arm.

_You've got to be kidding me. _Corbin, still hidden under the ramp, heard the noise. _Bulletproof shields. As though the vests weren't enough._

As the soldier had said, Corbin had only his suppressed Beretta to rely on. While 9mm rounds did damage equivalent to zero against someone with Type II body armor, the impact was usually enough to stun his enemy long enough for Corbin to find a kill shot, but anyone with a shield would simply deflect his bullets without any reaction.

"Hey."

Corbin froze as he heard the voice directed towards the ramp he was under. He was in direct line of sight—only hidden because of the poor lighting and the dark shadows. He fingered the pin on his stun grenade. Now one of the more cautious soldiers was pointing almost right at him, and the leader was coming alongside while the noisy one looked up at the ceiling in disinterest.

They were moving closer now, and had raised their shields and weapons while walking towards him. Corbin's heart rate had doubled while he struggled to remain still. _I may not be a combat specialist anymore,_ he said, swallowing hard, _but I'm still a marksman._ His pistol was already in front of him, and he aimed for the tiny space between one soldier's helmet and the top of his shield—right at his forehead. _But still_, he thought, nervously pulling the trigger back slightly, _two shots, this fast, and this accurate…_?

**Blam!** An un-suppressed gunshot went off.

Corbin had jerked at the sound. His weapon went off as well, a bullet harmlessly sailing over his target's shoulder and into the ceiling several dozen meters away. When he realized he hadn't been hit, he opened his eyes.

**Tink-tink-tink:** The sound of a casing hitting the ground.

The previously disinterested soldier cursed loudly.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?" The apparent squad leader had turned around and was reprimanding him.

He cursed again. "I'm sorry! I was stretching and it went off!"

The other enemy had also diverted his attention to the wayward soldier. Corbin saw his chance.

The Beretta's action clicked twice. Corbin fired both rounds in half a second, and then used his steadying hand to catch the cartridges before they hit the ground.

"Ugh!" The leader fell to his knees and keeled over, dropping his rifle. He rolled to one side and grasped one knee with both hands. Blood covered the floor where he had fallen and was now soaking his hands.

The two soldiers looked at him in disbelief. "Where? _Where?_" They frantically looked around for the source of the gunshots.

"I… I…!" The squad leader was in tremendous pain. The bullets had hit him from behind the knee. The first had lodged in the muscle to one side of the joint, and the second had passed directly behind it, destroying the flesh that remained between the first bullet and the front of his leg with the exit wound. The leader held one deformed bullet, covered with blood.

The two uninjured soldiers had seen the bullet and the large amount of blood in the front of their leader's leg. They were in a frenzied state, looking in the opposite direction of Corbin, assuming the bullets had come from the same side as the wound had appeared.

Corbin growled inwardly. _Quit moving!_ He desperately tried to aim at the back of the head of one soldier, but he was staggering backward and Corbin had no clean shot.

After a few seconds, the far soldier who had misfired seemed to realize what had happened, and raised his rifle in Corbin's direction.

"What?" The third enemy had now stumbled within a few meters of Corbin. He had seen the other raise his weapon.

"Behind—!" The Beretta's action clicked again, and the casing hit the concrete. The closer soldier dropped to one knee. Corbin dashed out towards him.

The distant soldier fired on full automatic. In his panic, he didn't compensate for the kickback, and his aim went high.

Corbin reached his destination. He caught the injured soldier just before he fell, pressed the tip of the suppressor against where his neck met his skull and fired, killing him silently. The soldier dropped his rifle, while Corbin pulled his body into a headlock. His upper torso took several bullets from the assault rifle. Corbin felt the impacts, and grabbed the top of the shield, raising it up in front of the dead soldier for further protection. He had now counted thirty bullets, plus the one that had misfired, so he didn't need to see the other soldier reach for his belt to know he was out of ammunition.

Hearing the sound of a different rifle being picked up, Corbin swiftly aimed towards the downed leader and fired at his head. The rifle clattered to the ground and the leader fell lifeless. The final soldier had now tossed the empty magazine away and attached the full one. Corbin didn't loosen his grip on the body, and aimed carefully over the shoulder. The soldier was panicking and attempted to fire immediately. He realized he had not chambered a bullet and fumbled with the weapon to do so, lowering his shield slightly. A bullet immediately found his neck, shattering his throat. He fell to the ground, choking.

Corbin dropped the body, and picked up the rifle at his feet. He turned away from the figure writhing on the concrete a dozen meters off. A pool of blood was collecting under him. _I'm sorry_, he thought grimly, _a few more seconds of misery to save me one bullet_.

Walking toward the ramp, he found that the rifle had no shoulder strap. He jogged over to his original hiding place. _There should be enough time to merge clips._ He confirmed the sentiment by checking his watch. Setting the rifle against a wall, Corbin quickly removed the magazine from his weapon, and then took the three bullets from his older magazine and added them before reloading the weapon. _Counting the chambered one, I've got fifteen left… and this,_ he thought, looking at the rifle. He considered stripping one of the soldiers' shields. Suddenly, he heard more footsteps above.

----

Sousuke was still frozen. The footsteps had been definite, but he hadn't heard even breathing since then… nearly five minutes ago. Surely the enemy knew he was there.

Suddenly he heard footsteps again. But they sounded further away. The enemy must've retreated slightly since Sagara last heard them, but why were they no longer hiding their presence? The sounds were definitely getting louder. They were within a meter of the corner now, but this time they didn't stop. Sousuke held his weapon at arm's length. He was sure the enemy would emerge any moment. He was not, however, sure of whether the enemy knew he was there.

In an instant, he appeared: the tip of a rifle, followed by the hands, then the body of a soldier. For some reason even he couldn't explain, Sousuke didn't fire. The enemy kept walking, clearly alert, but apparently unaware of him. Sagara watched him swallow once.

_He must be new… he's nervous while patrolling._ Sousuke now understood why instinct had told him not to fire. This soldier was nearly harmless. He'd probably gotten word of Corbin taking out several guards and was sent out alone. But now he was a walking cache of weapons and ammunition—exactly what Sagara would need before he moved to the next building.

Wasting no time, Sousuke slid behind him silently, covering his mouth with his left hand and pulling him into the suppressed Beretta at his hip, which now pushed against the enemy's lower spine. "Freeze."

The soldier jerked slightly before raising his hands in surrender. His rifle fell a few centimeters before it hung by the shoulder strap.

"Do exactly as I say and I will keep you alive." The soldier nodded sharply in Sagara's grip.

But now Sousuke was second-guessing himself. _Why am I being merciful? This is totally irrational! I should have just killed him and taken his equipment... Actions like these are too dange—._

Sagara heard the soft click of a suppressed weapon behind him, and a sharp pain in his back.

(to be continued…)


	2. Chapter 2: Beyond Your Need to Know

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Chapter 2

----

Sousuke gasped as he sat up abruptly in bed.

Despite his protests, Tessa and Kaname had forced him to sleep on top of the mattress tonight as well. He felt much less vulnerable under the bed, but at least Mao was in the other room, so he had fallen asleep without much worry.

The door slid open.

"Sousuke." It was Kaname's voice. She had stated his name bluntly. "Why are you making noise? Did Tessa come in here again?"

Sagara squeezed his eyes shut and blinked a few times. His eyes slowly adjusted until he saw her at the door. "Chidori… I'm sorry to have woken you. I was dreaming."

Kaname grunted an affirmative response. She yawned silently for several seconds. Drops of saline collected at her eyes from the yawn, and she blinked them away while scratching her head sleepily. "Well I wasn't really sleeping anyway. Can't seem to…." She yawned again. "Were you having a nightmare?"

Sousuke turned to the side and let his feet touch the floor while he sat on the bed. "Not exactly… although it would have been after a little while longer."

Sagara seemed unusually responsive. Kaname could sense seriousness about him. She slid the door closed behind her and walked over to the bed, casting aside the possibility of Tessa bursting in moments later and screaming "You hypocrite!" There was little chance of that happening anyway, as she was still handcuffed to Mao, who was snoring like there was no tomorrow. This snoring had contributed in no small part to Chidori's sleeplessness.

"After a little while longer?" She used the open ended question while sitting down next to him in the dark. He had his head down, resting his elbows on his knees and staring at the floor.

"It was… something from the past."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Kaname felt rather stupid, asking such a clichéd and thus watered down question.

Sousuke paused briefly. "…I've been having this dream for several nights now." He brought his arm up and rubbed his forehead. Chidori could see that a small amount of sweat had collected there.

"You're still sick…."

Sousuke shook his head at the changed subject. "This is a tolerable level of discomfort."

"Right…." Kaname could've expected as much. "So about your dream…."

Sousuke sighed softly before looking up at the ceiling. "It was just after I had joined Mithril. I had just been assigned to the SRT…"

----

The Captain stood before the stiff new recruit, reading the statistics and comments regarding him which were attached to a clipboard.

"Sergeant Sagara."

"Ma'am!"

She handed off the clipboard to one of her subordinates. "You understand your importance in the SRT, do you not?"

"Yes, ma'am." Sousuke responded sharply, but at a medium volume.

The Captain sighed through her nose and let her shoulders drop down a centimeter or two. She began pacing back and forth. "We have encountered a situation. Another Mithril operative has requested the backup of a combat specialist. We believe you are fit to take this assignment, but we are taking a considerable risk in sending a recent trainee…alone." She looked up to gauge his response.

"Alone, ma'am?"

"Yes. You have been instructed regarding the SRT as a combat unit. Each member has specific abilities to contribute to the whole, and as Sergeant Mao has reported, intentionally guising your combat skills is testament enough that your finer aspects still remain to be seen."

"Your compliment is appreciated, ma'am."

"However, this assignment is one that would normally be taken by a veteran of the force. Due to circumstances beyond your need to know, we will be sending you instead. The amount of information you receive about this mission will be strictly regimented, even more so than to another operative."

"You do not trust me yet."

"That is correct. If the report on the incident in the Berutarube forests is to be trusted, you are the type of person who understands how important your assignment is, given that I am speaking with you directly."

"A briefing from the Captain is an unusual privilege."

She stopped mid-stride and turned to look him straight in the eye. "Time is critical. You will depart immediately. Good luck, Sergeant."

Sagara saluted, and remained in this position until the captain had returned the salute and left the briefing room. Only the helicopter pilot remained in an otherwise empty room of chairs and a projector screen.

A moment of silence passed.

"Shall we go?" The female pilot walked to the door. Sousuke lowered his arm.

_They had given me so little information that I was surprised to see the M9—the Arm Slave that you, Chidori, have seen the others piloting—that was attached to the heavy transport._

The large chopper had already been prepped for flight. The pilot immediately took her seat, and the gunship lifted off as soon as Sousuke had stepped inside.

The craft easily rose about half a meter before it caught the full weight of the Arm Slave under it. The A.S. was in a recessed chamber in the middle of the landing pad. As the rotation of the helicopter blades increased, the mammoth machine slowly emerged from its cage like a fierce animal rising up to the coliseum ground.

Minutes later the pilot was continuing to skillfully increase altitude while Sousuke watched the huge submarine disappear beneath the water below. Seeing this, it was fair to question whether the helicopter had been lifting off to reveal the M9 or the submarine had been submerging to produce the same. Sagara closed the large door on the side of the helicopter and sat silently on the long bench-seat. There was no one else with them.

Once they had reached cruising altitude, the pilot passed a yellow envelope back to Sagara. "Some light reading. It'll be a long flight." She turned on the ECS. The signal was also sent to the Gernsback underneath, and each vanished instantly from outside view.

_The "long flight" was a considerable understatement. I had lost my bearings quickly once we got over the ocean—I'd never spent much time overseas at that point. After several hours of nothing but water, a fueling plane docked with us. I had never seen a helicopter refueled in flight before. Setting the submarine aside, this was something that made me realize the size of the network Mithril had._

The pilot had cancelled ECS only seconds before the plane began its procedure. If not for the sound of jet engines, Sousuke would not have known it was there at all, since the aircraft also used ECS. He could only guess that the helicopter's fueling port had some sort of electronic indicator that the fuel plane had picked up.

After his momentary bewilderment at the refueling procedure, Sousuke set aside the envelope, sat back, and crossed his arms. The helicopter's rotors drowned out any other noise that might have gone on while the airplane turned off in another direction.

There were more than a few things that was making him feel uncomfortable. The use of a helicopter for presumably cross-continental flight was one of the most disconcerting. Also, if they were deploying an M9 (an A.S. Sousuke had used less than half a dozen times), then the "backup" he'd be giving would likely be significant.

The Captain had made her appearance: clearly a brief liaison in a schedule packed with other important activities. Sousuke didn't like her disposition one bit. Not the person's disposition in general, but her disposition regarding his mission. If he were the discerning type, he might have taken her words as indication that he was not the person they had wanted to send. "Circumstances beyond his need to know" certainly seemed to imply that. Sagara and Weber were replacing members of the SRT with heavy injuries—probably the kind that made you wish you'd counted bullets better… the kind that got you your pension a little too early. With this in mind, Sousuke couldn't help thinking that one of these incapacitated members specialized in exactly what he was going to be doing.

No matter what else he considered, he couldn't believe the lack of information. He was looking at the _single page_ of data regarding his rendezvous point with and the appearance of the "Mithril operative."

_I guess "light reading" was another understatement._

It was one thing to have a squad leader tell his squad, "Just follow my orders. That's all you need to know." It was another thing entirely to send a single, totally uninformed Arm Slave pilot with minimal ECS familiarity—or familiarity with the equipment at all—into an unknown location under unknown circumstances for an unknown purpose. Sousuke found the situation bitterly exciting... Mostly bitter.

The page about the other operative was about as informative regarding his position in Mithril as the isolated one-hundredth page of a long novel was informative regarding the ending. He was a clean-shaven man with short, dark hair. He appeared to be of European descent, but Sousuke couldn't tell for sure.

"Louis Corbin." He read the name out loud. Well, the name seemed to imply he was European as well. Sousuke hoped he didn't have a strong accent. Sagara was fluent in English, but sometimes people's English isn't English at all.

He read the name again, this time pronouncing "Louis" in the French manner. Neither of them sounded very good.

Below the face shot of Corbin was a small map with minimal detail. Sousuke could expect some more information to have been loaded into the M9, but the AI had more than likely been programmed to give him as little information as was needed to get him to the rendezvous point.

Speaking of which, the meeting place was hardly private. What appeared to be a service road connected to the back of a building labeled "pawn shop" in an otherwise urban-looking area. This was about all Sousuke could tell from the map. Below it were two captions:

"Topography has changed since the creation of this record."

"Knock twice on the back door and stay visible."

Neither caption made him feel better about the whole ordeal. "Changed topography" might mean anything. The method of contact was also terrible. If the information had been intercepted, Sousuke would be a sitting duck. It wasn't like he could barge through a small service road in the Gernsback, no matter how silent the engine was. There wasn't even any information regarding where he could station the M9 when he went to meet Corbin.

Sagara sighed loudly. "Is this serious?" He asked honestly to the pilot.

"What?" She took off the headset. "I didn't hear you, sorry."

"I asked if this was serious. Do they really expect me to do this blindfolded?"

The pilot lifted her arms in a shrug. "Listen, kid. All they told me is the coordinates to fly to and that the op down there would take care of the rest. Just doing my job, here."

"Yeah…" Sousuke banged the back his head against the inside of the helicopter hull. "This is suicide."

_I didn't know who or what I was up against. All I knew was that they had a lot more information than I did. It was all getting pretty frustrating._

Sousuke agitatedly opened the envelope and stuffed the paper back inside. _Wait a minute…_, he thought, _what is this?_

Sagara removed an ID card from the envelope. He hadn't noticed it before. It was a poorly laminated, blue rectangular card. The edges were bent from apparent abuse, and there was even what appeared to be a coffee stain on one corner. It so happened that this corner contained the picture identification: someone who, at least through the brown stain, appeared to be Sousuke.

After studying the card briefly and memorizing what he could guess was his undercover name, Sagara found himself thinking of something else. He looked around the helicopter. Nothing down at the tail. Nothing on the other side. Nothing on his own bench. He patted various places on his uniform. Nothing there either.

He growled to himself. "I'm supposed to be _backup_ and they have equipment OSP!" He slammed his fist against the bench.

_I was starting to feel like Mithril had hired me only to kill me off soon after. OSP means On-Site Procurement. Basically I had no guns or ammo. Since they called me into the briefing room without any warning, I didn't even have my knife with me._

Sousuke looked down at what he was wearing. The Mithril uniform. Not terribly conspicuous, but in an urban setting it would be just begging for attention. The map he had now memorized didn't show enough of the area for Sousuke to determine if he could get from his insertion point to the back door of the pawn shop without being seen—either in the M9 or on foot. He rubbed his eyes slowly and forced himself to take a few full deep breaths.

_Alright_, he thought, _I've spent so much time being frustrated with how little I've been given that I haven't had time to figure out how to use what little I have._

Sousuke wasn't the kind of soldier to give up before he started. Odds were definitely against him, but this wasn't the first time. And it would hopefully not be the last.

----

"Kid, get ready. We're almost there." The pilot lifted the headset off of her ears briefly to hear his response.

"Good. Take this back to base." Sagara dropped the yellow envelope in the empty seat to her right.

She looked back at him in surprise. He was stuffing something into his back pocket.

"You don't need that?" She asked, pointing to the envelope.

"Nothing on it anyway. Probably nothing on it because they figured I'd be unintelligent enough to keep it with me. Keep it steady for a minute."

Wind blasted into the cockpit before the pilot could respond. Sousuke stepped to the open door and jumped out immediately. The pilot's jaw dropped, and she turned back to the controls in disbelief.

Now seemingly hanging in midair, Sagara stepped across the invisible Arm Slave, whose cloaking distorted only slightly as he mantled the final step before opening the cockpit. Even with only a few training exercises, he knew the machine's structure like he'd built it himself. He'd found the release lever without looking. (After all, it wouldn't do much good to look down and see only the earth a few thousand meters below.) The dark cockpit opened and he slipped deftly inside and closed the hatch.

The communication line popped to life immediately. "You're freaking insane." It was the pilot.

Sousuke ignored her. "ETA?"

"Screw my orders, I'm sending you the flight data before you do something even dumber."

The monitor in front of Sagara turned on.

(Standby Mode. A 'Wake on ASN' signal has been received. Download queued data?)

"Proceed."

(Flight data retrieved. Last known layout of area is being drawn. Please wait 6 seconds.)

"Six seconds? Are the computers in these Third Generations really that slow?"

(Unrecognized command.)

"Never mind."

(Previous command ignored.)

Wire frames of buildings and streets and even small obstacles like lamp posts and traffic lights appeared on the three-dimensional map.

"Highlight confirmed topography."

Buildings slowly began to turn from dark to bright green as the computer scanned the area below him. Some buildings never went bright, but Sousuke could still recognize the general area on-screen as the block on his single page of briefing.

The pilot's communication popped on again. "The destination coordinates are right over there. You see it?"

Sousuke looked at the point on the map briefly. "Looks like a parking deck."

"Lucky guess. Anyway I'm taking her down."

"Wait! I'm seeing two cars parked there."

"I don't have enough fuel to hold this thing up much longer. You wanna land there or not?"

Sousuke furrowed his eyebrows. "Thermal scan."

(Redrawing area. Please wait 7 seconds.)

Sousuke rolled his eyes.

Sure enough, seven seconds later the thermal scan came up.

"Superimpose the topographical data."

On top of the parking deck, Sousuke could see the rough wire frames of two cars, a few spaces apart. Between them were two people, showing orange on the thermal scan.

"We can't risk it," Sousuke said to the pilot. "But there's no one on the other side. Ten o'clock, and…" He waited for the data to come up. "Five thousand meters."

"I see it. You want to land on the street?"

"Unless you see a better place."

"If it were up to me I'd just drop you on top of those cars."

"Is that a no?"

The pilot was silent as she guided the chopper to the other side of the parking deck. On the thermal scan Sousuke could see the two men shielding their eyes from the wind.

"This is fine."

"Here! We're still 150 meters up!"

"There's no time. Drop it."

"Tch." She made a disgusted sound. "It's your funeral."

**Click.** The restraints popped off and the M9 started its freefall.

(to be continued…)


	3. Chapter 3: Shougeki

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

_Author's Note: I've received several reviews already, and to those I didn't personally thank, here is my gratitude. As those of you who have read my other fanfictions know, I have already written all of Shougeki. I am posting them after two edits, each of which is after at least one week of not looking at the chapter. I anticipate I'll be posting 2 to 3 chapters a week until the end, which is Chapter 15. Just a reminder to check my profile for more detailed information. Hope you enjoy Chapter 3!_

-_Eso_

_Edit 09/11/06: (groans) Another typo was found, and while I obviously appreciate the notification, typos are not acceptable to me. Please expect just a little longer between chapters so I can move up to 3 edits. Can't believe I'm missing these three times already. Maybe I won't miss them four times. _

Chapter 3

----

"A hundred and fifty meters?" Kaname was sitting close to Sousuke—possibly a coincidence, possibly not a coincidence.

"Yeah. In retrospect, it was probably not the best option. I had to decide between an invisible helicopter sending strong wind through the streets, and landing the Gernsback where the impact might have been felt."

"Are you feeling alright? I think you're still sweating a little."

"It does feel a little warm in here," Sousuke said with some uncertainty.

"Let's go to the balcony. I want to hear the rest."

Sousuke nodded and stood up. Sliding the door to the bedroom open slowly, he led Kaname out to the balcony.

She quietly slid the outside glass door closed behind her. Kaname was running her fingers through her hair, which was splayed in various directions from her attempted sleep. On cool nights like this, her long, soft hair would catch just a little of the breeze, giving her a pleasant sensation. It was the second week of September. The cooler climate had been a welcome change since the summer.

Sagara rubbed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Chidori was sitting on the railing in front of him, kicking her feet slowly.

"Be careful, Chidori…"

She smiled. "Oh, I'm not worried. If I'm about to fall you'll save me, right?"

"Normally that would be true, but in my current state…"

"I was just kidding. So what happened when you landed?"

Sousuke leaned against the door and crossed his arms, looking up at the sky thoughtfully.  
"Well…"

----

(Shougeki ima kuru. Impact imminent. Starting all systems.)

The ground shook considerably under the impact of the huge machine. The shockwave from the landing tore through the deserted street, sending a few garbage cans and their lids flying. Sousuke stayed perfectly still in his landing position. The Arm Slave had landed heavily: It had taken one knee and the opposing hand to the ground. Four large patches of cracks appeared on the aged concrete at the impact points. Sagara watched the still active thermal scan. No one was in line of sight in either direction, but he could see half a dozen orange colored silhouettes in the vicinity.

"Strange… they didn't even stop? Surely they noticed me…." Sousuke watched for nearly a minute in silence as the half dozen people walking the street went along their way, totally oblivious to the mechanized weapon capable of leveling any part of the city within a half mile radius of where it was.

"Wait… where is this?" Sousuke checked his watch. _It's midday in Japan… but it's clearly late in the evening here. That would mean I'm…._

The computer responded to his question silently before he could approximate his location based on the time.

(Current position: 38 degrees North, 118 degrees West. Exact coordinates cannot be determined due to interference in the area.)

"Interference? Well, never mind that. What city is this?"

(Los Angeles, California, United States of America. This particular area partly matches known topography of what was previously Little Tokyo, but this cannot be confirmed at present.)

"Little Tokyo, huh? No irony there. But the people… they didn't even notice me." Some old information previously thought to be useless was stirring in Sousuke's mind. "Wait, California gets a lot of earthquakes, doesn't it? What kind of tectonic activity has there been here recently?"

"This information is only recorded with seismic activity above 4.0 Richter magnitude. There have been 5 such instances in the past four months.)

"Out of sheer curiosity, was the one I just caused recorded?"

(It is highly unlikely that such an impact would register.)

"I was joking." Sousuke was consciously developing a habit of asking irrelevant questions of the M9's computer. The third generation Arm Slaves gave readouts that were probably intended to sound more human that giving straight numbers. On some level it was working.

This habit may have been a side effect of becoming accustomed to the palladium powered reactor in the Gernsback as opposed to the internal combustion engines found in the second generation Arm Slaves he had used many times before. The stealthy, tactical approach to a given situation was completely thrown out of the window when machines like Savages were used. There was simply no way to accomplish it.

Years later, an outsider might have said that the M9 had been single-handedly responsible for Sousuke's Arm Slave skills melding inexorably with that of combat on foot. With a weapon like the Gernsback, things were possible that the average A.S. pilot wouldn't have dreamed of doing in a ride-on only a year or two earlier. Sousuke had practiced maneuvers that would have crushed both machine and pilot if performed in the older units. The muscle packages fused to intricate joints made movements like shoulder rolls and firing prone not only possible… but expected. The M9 was faster, stronger, quieter, could hold more, could jump farther, could jump _higher_, required less fuel, and even weighed less than that of its best predecessor.

And the maneuver Sagara had just performed was one he would look back on many times as an action he could never have taken before. No machine he had ever used had obtained this level of superiority over the world of war. He was one of less than a hundred people to ever pilot this beautiful monstrosity. Beautiful above all because no one else could see how beautiful it was.

Sousuke got up slowly. 9.5 metric tons of precise destructive power now stood between a parking deck and a deserted apartment building; invisible to the naked eye.

_The recent earthquakes explain my landing going unnoticed, but there's still the critical issue of where to actually put the A.S._

It had occurred to Sagara during the flight that the urban area would offer little shelter for the M9. On the thermal scan there were very few people nearby, which would seem to suggest the area was no longer heavily residential if it had been before. The parking deck he had landed next to had no cars entering or leaving it—Sousuke could also see on the monitors that no others were parked on the second or third floor either. He was surprised to find himself thinking that the two people on the top were pretty suspicious looking, given that no one else was anywhere nearby.

But Sagara had priorities. Among dozens of things, the time at which he was to meet this other operative was not defined in his briefing. Reconnaissance and a full tactical plan would have to wait. Even finding a suitable location for the Arm Slave was secondary. After requesting an overhead view of the area, Sousuke found himself relatively close to the rendezvous point. Getting there unnoticed would not be a walk in the park, but despite this being his first attempt, Sagara was confident in his ability to remain undetected in an urban area.

For reasons he would have to determine later, there were only about thirty human beings within detectable range—and detectable range was quite large with the M9. Sousuke decided that if his artificial earthquakes would go unnoticed, it was probably better to jump where he needed to go. Traffic lights, telephone lines, and various other obstacles threatened his invisibility if he simply walked the few blocks to what was probably the pawn shop.

Sousuke leapt into midair, feeling the exhilarating liberty of freefall despite being inside the machine. The joints and muscles absorbed an amazing amount of shock when he landed again on the opposite side of the parking deck. Had he looked down, he would have noticed that the asphalt hadn't even cracked. Nine and a half tons was almost negligible weight when combined with the precision mechanics he was controlling.

He jumped again, resisting the urge to use the booster pack Mithril had included in his load out. This time he landed within 100 meters of his rendezvous point. He would need to move quickly to a fully deserted area and get there on foot.

One of the first warnings Mithril's pilots were given regarding the ECS invisibility system was that animals such as birds and dogs would react to its presence, so when Sousuke saw a medium-sized animal on the thermal scan he knew he could go no further. At the moment he was near an intersection. To his sides were two-story buildings which also might've been deserted apartment complexes. Across the street to either side was an aged brick building marked as a furniture store and one which was probably an antiques shop. This must have been on the outskirts of Little Tokyo. If the name of that area implied anything, then the architecture he had seen thus far would seem to discount the possibility that he was actually in it. But then, the information he had downloaded had read "previously Little Tokyo." What might've happened to the area since then Sagara had no way of knowing… but these buildings were not built within the last two decades.

On the map Sousuke found exactly what he was looking for: a large warehouse—or at least something similar—about two blocks to the northeast. In less than a minute he was there getting readings from inside.

The computer didn't detect any electrical devices in use, and there was nothing on the thermal scan. Sagara quietly circled the entire warehouse and decided which door he was most likely to fit into. He wouldn't need to find a permanent storage place. This was Saturday night, so the warehouse would very likely not be in use for the next 24 hours. That was hopefully plenty of time for Sousuke to meet up with the operative and determine exactly what he was supposed to be doing here.

For now he needed to find a way inside. While certainly efficient, pulling out the monomolecular cutter and slicing a rectangular hole in this large door was not a viable option. It was far too early to be destroying property… never mind leaving a very obvious entry point and making enough noise to bring several squads of patrol cars his way. No, Sousuke would have to leave the M9 at the door and find a way to open it on his own.

Mithril had not given him any weapons or ammunition of any kind. Without so much as his combat knife, entering the warehouse would be no simple task. There were easier ways to get in other than cutting a giant hole. The most promising of these was to try to find the security guard that was probably patrolling the area. Sousuke didn't have the convenience of ECS on his person, but if he studied the map long enough and watched the guard's route, he could probably get in somehow.

----

Like clockwork, a human figure appeared on the thermal scan. The map showed the outline of a normal sized door that was in the guard's path. Sagara couldn't waste any time. He opened the cockpit and nimbly made his way down the body of the invisible Arm Slave. He would have to make it to the door before the guard did.

With the map firmly ingrained in his memory, Sousuke sprinted through the darkness. The warehouse to his left cast a dark shadow over the nearby area. Moonlight was flooding the rest of the grassy area where he was. The door that Sagara hoped the guard would enter was just around the corner. He had to admit that luck was on his side right now, since that very corner was just as dark as the side of the building he was sprinting down.

He slowed to a walk and pressed gently against the wall, controlling his breathing as the corner got ever closer. If his approximations from the monitors were right, the guard would be near the door now. Having reached the corner, Sousuke slowly leaned out, hoping the cover of darkness was enough.

Suddenly, before he could look around the other side, he saw light coming in his direction. He jumped back behind the wall and watched a flashlight's beam scan the grass just a meter from his feet. When the light disappeared, Sousuke had to take a guess that the guard was about to open the door. He squatted down and felt the grass near his feet until he found a rock about the size of a racquetball.

_It was about then that I thought I heard him opening the door. I had planned to toss the rock into the fence on the other side to distract him. Then I would run into the open door while he went to check the source of the noise. Unfortunately, the guard was a little more observant than I had thought._

Sagara leaned out to wait for his opportunity. When his head was all the way around the corner, he squinted to try to make out the dark figure that was facing the building. In an instant the guard's flashlight was pointed directly at his eyes. He must have seen him the first time he tried to look, and was waiting for him now.

What else could he do? Sousuke had just had his heart leap into his throat. He didn't know why, but the fact that he had been outwitted had scared him to death. Even though he knew he could easily kill or at least disarm the guard, he sprinted back the way he came.

Before he had made it ten steps he saw the flashlight beam tracking his movements down the side of the building.

"Hey! Stop!" The guard shouted angrily. "Stop running, kid! I'm going to call your parents!"

Sousuke had already been bitterly laughing at himself on the inside. He was so angry that he was running that he couldn't even stop. Now he really did look like some 16 year old kid trespassing on private property….

About twenty sprinting steps later, Sagara had collected his wits. The guard was fast—too fast. He was closing in slowly. This guard now had his handgun out. At this point Sousuke really was in trouble. He had no weapons, no place to dive into cover, and if the guard was faster than he was, he might be a pretty good marksman, too. That disqualified the possibility of attacking him now. The odds were starting to stack against him… the born and raised soldier with killer instincts even he found hard to control… versus a security guard at a warehouse in some deserted part of Los Angeles. Though his chances of doing what he had intended to do were slimming quickly, a grin appeared on Sagara's face.

Watching the flashlight beam cast his own shadow in front of him, Sousuke made a leaping sidestep to the right, and after a few more steps forward he stepped back to the left. The flashlight beam followed. Suddenly it became somewhat distorted.

**Clang! **Sousuke heard the sound of metal on metal, followed by the loud grunt of the guard who then collapsed on the grass.

When he turned around, Sousuke saw the guard lying unconscious with a small trickle of blood coming from his nose. His flashlight had broken and gone out, and his handgun was lying beside it. Sagara walked over and picked up the gun quickly, noticing that the guard hadn't ever taken the safety off. It was no wonder. The guard had thought Sousuke was a harmless child.

Sagara sighed in exhaustion and leaned against the invisible obstacle—the right leg of the M9.

(to be continued…)


	4. Chapter 4: Warehouse

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Chapter 4

----

Kaname was laughing so hard that she nearly fell off of the balcony railing just as Sousuke had warned her not to do.

"He… he… ahahah…!" Chidori's grin was huge. She couldn't make words out. "He… ran into its leg?"

"Yes," Sousuke said matter-of-factly. "I could only make out exactly where the A.S. was standing because he was shining the flashlight at the grass in front of me. The grass under the leg was laying flat against the ground."

Kaname's laughter calmed down. "I… heh… I almost feel sorry for him though."

"As did I. He was only a working man doing his job."

"So what happened then?"

"Well, I had his sidearm, but the whole encounter had not gone well. Ideally I would've simply slipped by unnoticed. I underestimated the guard and he saw me, so now I was faced with moving his unconscious body without waking him. I also risked having the M9 found if I took it inside."

"Why is that?"

"Because even if the guard regained consciousness and couldn't remember me, his gun would still be missing."

"Ohh, so he'd look all around the warehouse for you."

"Probably worse than that. If the handgun I now had was reported missing, then any action I took after that would be dangerous."

Chidori hopped off of the railing and leaned against the door next to him. "So what did you do then?"

----

Sousuke couldn't think of much. He couldn't have the guard go missing entirely. There was only one viable option at this point… and he didn't like it.

Sagara picked up the man by his arms and walked backwards, dragging him all the way back to the door that the patrolman had started to open. Once he and the guard were inside, he closed the door again.

Inside was the guard's post: a small, rectangular room with glass windows on each side opposite the corner Sousuke had just come from. Outside one window was apparently the primary cargo entrance. During Sagara's inspection of both map and reality, he had seen many standard-looking cargo doors—the type that one would see on the back of the cargo truck itself and at the entrance it backed into. This side of the warehouse seemed to be a bit different. There was a much larger door just outside the guard station.

It was very dark inside except for the red "Exit" signs. Sagara took several frustrating minutes sitting the guard in the chair and leaning him back against the nearby counter. Anxiety was starting to build up, because his only plan required a good bit of luck. At least the guard wasn't showing any signs of waking up.

Sousuke would have little choice but to find the breaker for this large corrugated gate if he was ever going to get the M9 through quietly. "Quietly" was a relative term in this case. The door at which he'd left the Arm Slave was big enough for him to fit through, but it would require sliding under the gate. And that—ECS or no ECS—would not be a subtle maneuver.

He could risk going back to the M9 to get a reading for where the breaker might be, but he figured it had to be nearby the guard station for emergency purposes. He squinted to make out the shapes past the windows…. Sure enough, just outside the inner door to the room that he was in, there was a large switch. With some measure of haste, Sousuke left the room and threw the huge breaker up. The entire warehouse lit up after a second. He could hardly believe what he saw.

Parts. Assembly lines. Machinery. _Weapons_. All for Arm Slaves. Even at first glance, the parts looked like that of the M9. In reality, Sousuke knew, the United States had been undergoing evaluation of the XM9 (code named as such) for some time now. Apparently they were approaching the mass production stage. This warehouse wasn't large enough, nor did it have the kind of loading space for actually assembling the machines. The assembly lines he saw were actually for smaller pieces. Many manufacturers' and industry leaders' equipment went into the production of Arm Slaves. Rarely would any less than half a dozen companies be responsible for the ultimate fabrication of the bipedal ride-ons. This was to keep competition high for bids to produce them for the government. It also kept tabs on each stage of production so that no one could sabotage the whole process alone. So this warehouse was for the storage and pre-assembly of smaller parts of the XM9 and probably some older models such as the M6.

It was convenient, but it wouldn't stop the average worker from noticing a completed M9 standing around the warehouse without American markings on it. For this reason, there really wasn't any distinct advantage to having these parts in the warehouse. Still, its purpose and location might have come in handy for Sousuke, should such a need arise.

Now he needed to find a place inside the warehouse to store his own completed machine. The whole reason he couldn't simply leave it outside in ECS mode was because of the possibility that someone—such as an unfortunate security guard—might run right into it. There was also the matter of the power supply. Sousuke didn't have enough experience with the palladium reactor to say for sure why, but he did know that operating ECS for several days would either be simply impossible or just a very bad idea. He had no way of knowing how long the M9 would have to be stored here. But within the confines of a warehouse, he could have the M9 react to anyone proximal to it. The power issue was less prominent here as well. Compared to the energy required to operate the Electronic Cloaking System, the computer-operated scanners required a negligible amount, meaning Sousuke could simply have the computer activate invisibility when it detected motion inside the facility. A third advantage was that because of the nature of such a facility, and especially because of what was already in it, anyone who might scan for the M9 if trouble came Sousuke's way would probably overlook any readings coming from inside this warehouse. He could only hope that upon meeting the other operative he would get enough information to really gauge his vulnerabilities. Right now he could merely attempt to cover each one he thought of.

A mostly empty corner surrounded by huge crates and some logistical machinery caught Sagara's eye. The area seemed mostly used for storage, so it would probably be his best bet. Setting aside the many possible reasons for the Arm Slave to be discovered, Sousuke walked over to the huge door near the guard station. The operating box was mounted right next to it.

When he pressed the large button, the door opening mechanism screeched to life. A bright red light turned on above.

Chances were not good that the guard station was sound proofed—or, for that matter, insulated at all….

The door finally finished opening. Throwing the main power switch down again, Sagara dashed through the cargo door and sprinted back around the corner towards the Gernsback. After glancing over his shoulder to be sure the guard hadn't followed, he climbed up to the cockpit quickly. When Sousuke finished entering the irritatingly complex sequence of startup codes, he moved the Arm Slave towards the same corner he had now rounded half a dozen times. He returned to a thermal scan and immediately saw the guard's shape through the wall. He appeared to be moving, but not fully conscious. If Sagara could get inside quickly enough….

----

This was one of many times that Sousuke was thankful for a nearly silent propulsion system and shock absorbent leg joints. While certainly audible, the walk from the huge door to the other side of the inner facility probably couldn't have been distinguished as an Arm Slave's movement. Sousuke turned the machine sideways and side stepped into the corner he had noticed earlier. Kneeling down, the M9 would not have been seen easily from most directions, even if the ECS was off or had failed, thanks to the tremendous towers of sealed boxes.

The thermal scan showed the guard standing up and looking around. Sousuke didn't have the time to set up a full-fledged detection system. He briefly instructed the Gernsback to use ECS whenever anyone was within visible range and to conserve as much power as possible. Without any further ado, he jumped out of the cockpit and down to the floor. With the monitors on the A.S., navigating the warehouse was simple. The naked eye, however, had a much harder time. Sousuke was running as fast as he dared. Occasionally he would see an obstacle at the last possible moment and jump to one side to avoid it. Once or twice he tripped over loose cables, but he ultimately made it back to the guard station in the darkness without injury. There was one more thing he needed to do before opening the door.

_For all I knew, the guard had already seen the door open and noticed his gun missing. If my original plan failed, I could only hope he didn't order an inspection of the facility. A missing firearm and an opened cargo door would obviously imply that I was not simply the rebellious child he originally assumed I was._

When Sousuke opened the door slowly and quietly he saw the guard's back turned to him. Before the guard turned around, Sousuke had silently placed the handgun on the counter nearby. He took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry about before, sir. I was scared and I didn't know what to do but run."

The guard whirled around in surprise. "What the—?"

"You tripped and fell down while you were chasing me. You got knocked out."

The man looked at Sousuke with a stern face. "So you brought me here?"

"Yes sir." Sousuke looked down, his nervousness only partly feigned. "I felt bad about it…."

"Where's my pistol?"

"Right there." Sagara pointed at the weapon.

"Hmm…." The guard's face softened slightly. "What are you doing here at this time of night, son?"

"Well…." To be honest, Sousuke still hadn't thought of a good excuse.

"Well?"

"I've always been a fan of Arm Slaves, sir… I don't know what got into me, but I really wanted to see one up close."

"It's illegal to be here, this is government property. Besides, they only put together the limbs and weapons here, there's no Arm Slaves to see."

"Yeah… I'm really sorry. Please don't report me." Sousuke hadn't attempted this sort of behavior before. Even he knew that it wasn't working very well.

"It sounds to me like you knew what you were doing and you decided to do it anyway. Ouch!" The guard put his hand up to his head and winced. "Did I fall on a rock or something?"

"Uh… I don't know."

The guard reached for his handgun. Sousuke looked at the outstretched hand nervously. "Don't worry, kid, I'm not gonna shoot you. I am going to have to report this, though. Sorry… I could lose my job if I don—hey!" The guard had just noticed the open cargo door. "How did that get open?"

"You know…" Sousuke's tone suddenly changed. "I turned the lights on in here and looked around a little while you were unconscious."

The man's expression turned to one of confusion when his eyes met Sousuke's.

Sagara smiled slightly. "Pretty big operation here… probably a lot of secrets I just saw. You said you'd lose your job if you let me go…."

"Yeah, so I'm ta—"

"I don't think so." Sousuke threw his fist into the man's sternum. He coughed violently while Sagara ran out of the access door.

Sousuke sprinted as fast as he could to the border. The warehouse was surrounded by a two meter high fence, but there was no barbed or razor wire. This was probably to keep the warehouse looking like a normal civilian operation. After all, even the vast information network of Mithril didn't show this facility as military. When Sousuke reached the fence he dashed over it in a single bound. He heard the access door burst open.

"Freeze, kid, or I'll shoot!"

Sousuke didn't stop running.

"I'm not kidding with you! Stop!"

Who would stop at this point?

**Click.** The action of the pistol could be heard even from twenty meters off where Sousuke was running.

----

He finally slowed down to a walk. Sagara put his hands on his knees briefly to catch his breath. _Not exactly a smooth operation so far…_, he thought.

Sousuke couldn't risk having ammunition found in his pocket if someone were to search him. Now a few blocks away from the warehouse he'd escaped, he tossed the .45 ammunition onto the ground in the alley.

It hadn't been a clean escape. If what the guard had said was true, he probably wouldn't report the intrusion at all for fear of losing his job… or, if the facility's operations were as black as Sousuke figured they might be, something worse than losing his job. Still, it wasn't a sure thing. Sagara's fingerprints were on the handgun. Even if he wasn't registered in this country, it wasn't a good situation to be in….

It was pitch black outside. According to the map he'd memorized, Sousuke was near the rendezvous point. The access road that led to the back of the pawn shop and the surrounding buildings began about a block from here, and was less than 100 meters long. He would have to put the events of a few moments ago behind him and continue. The real question was whether the operative was going to be there at all, given that there was no scheduled time to meet. If the time was assumed to be "as soon as possible after insertion," then Sousuke might have missed it already. It had been nearly half an hour since he had landed. Perhaps more.

What if Corbin's window of opportunity for meeting Sousuke at the designated area was very limited? What if Sagara had already screwed the whole thing up?

_I don't know anything about how Mithril operates. Is it possible they overestimated my capability? Should I have risked leaving the M9 out in the open?_ Sousuke wouldn't allow self-accusing thoughts to further jeopardize his mission. If he had made a critical mistake already, then he would fix it. It was that simple.

Sagara walked down the dark street. Lifeless buildings loomed overhead on both sides. The access road was gravel, and would have been easy to miss had Sousuke not studied its intersection carefully. He walked on one side of the slender road to keep from being too noisy on the rocks. In reality, however, if someone had been waiting for him here, they'd have seen him already. Sagara had nothing but the naked eye. If someone with a night vision or infrared scope was on top of one of the nearby buildings, he'd be picked off with ease.

The area was desolate, even for this time of night. Sousuke had always heard of Los Angeles being a very densely populated city, but the place he was in now may as well have been a ghost town. The sort of lawless deeds that went on in an area like this were exactly the sort of thing that Sousuke's backup might have been requested for.

The access road ended behind two buildings that shared the corner of an intersection. There were no alleys between these buildings, which made this lot behind them feel very unsafe. The pawn shop was the building to the right of that corner. The building to the left of it was not identified on his map… but either were any of the buildings he could now see the backs of.

Sousuke took a deep breath and walked up the few concrete stairs leading to the back door of the shop.

"_Knock twice on the door and stay visible."_

Sagara could only follow the single line of instructions exactly. The beat-up looking wooden door thumped twice when he knocked.

Not two seconds later, the door flung open. Sousuke found himself staring down the barrel of a large assault rifle.

(to be continued…)


	5. Chapter 5: 38 Special

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Chapter 5

----

"You the new guy?" A scruffy-looking man with a face covered with grease had the trigger half way pulled.

Sousuke tried to maintain his composure. He swallowed silently. The man was holding the rifle steadier than the best trained soldiers he'd ever seen.

"I thought you'd be taller," he said. "You'd better have it, or your body will be smelling like cordite in a few seconds."

"Uh…," Sousuke didn't know how to respond.

"You've got it, right? Let's see it."

Sagara took a small step back to try to distance himself from the muzzle. The man responded by pushing it closer to his face. Sagara wasn't sure what the "it" that he wanted was, but he only had one thing on him right now.

When the man saw the card Sousuke was pulling out of his pocket, he snatched it away immediately and lowered his gun. The weapon was an M-16, a standard issue semi-automatic assault rifle for United States Army and Special Forces. Sousuke could see the weapon was set on burst fire. There was little doubt now (if there was any to begin with) that he'd have three 5.56 millimeter rounds in him if his hand had emerged from his pocket with anything other than the card the man now held.

"Alright, it checks out." The man's tone softened considerably. "Sorry for the harsh introduction, but you and I both know this isn't exactly the kind of operation we want to go public. Fortunately for you, I'm not the head honcho around here. The big man would probably have shot you if you didn't have this out within three seconds." He waved the card slightly. "Speaking of which, you'd better hang onto this."

Sousuke took the card back from the outstretched hand. This man looked nothing like Corbin's picture. He probably wasn't the operative. Had he made a mistake? No… it couldn't have been a coincidence that this man wanted the ID card Sagara had. The Mithril operative must've been somewhere inside this network he had just involuntarily joined. Until he found him and could speak with him in private, he was walking on centimeter-thick ice.

The man began speaking again while he motioned Sousuke inside. "Your friend told me you often looked like a deer in the headlights. I thought it was a figure of speech, but apparently I was wrong." He laughed briefly. "I'm Jesse. Nice to meet ya." He thrust out a hand.

Sousuke hadn't shaken someone's hand in quite some time, so it must've been a pretty limp gesture when he returned it.

"I'm gonna be straight with you, Mr… uh…" His head dropped and he rubbed his forehead with his thumb and two fingers. "I'm terrible with names."

"The name is not relevant." Sousuke didn't really like the name on the card anyway.

The dirty-faced man took a seat on top of a crate near the back door. This was a small room that appeared to only hold a few unidentifiable storage containers and the doors to the counter and to the outside. "Alright, well anyway, I'm not going to lie to you. I don't want to be here. Honestly I think half the people involved in this are only doing it to pay the bills. But the big guy doesn't screw around. He already slit the throats of two people he overheard talking about leaving. The rest of us are too scared to leave now if we wanted to."

"I see…." Sousuke couldn't tell where the man was going with this.

"My point is… there's still time for you to back out. I can always just say you didn't show up." He sounded like he was outright encouraging Sagara to leave.

"I cannot do that, due to certain circumstances…."

"Sounds like the rest of us. Well, in that case, here you go. It's a little old, and it's probably not quite powerful enough for a guy like you—at least if what your friend says is true—but it's better than nothing." The man produced a medium sized revolver and held it out to Sagara handle-first.

Sousuke took the weapon and calmly opened the cylinder. He looked at the back of the six bullets that were inside. "38 special?"

The man slapped his leg and laughed heartily. "You friend told me you'd notice right off the bat. It can fire .357 magnum ammunition too; we just didn't have any at the time. Sorry to insult you like that."

"This is sufficient." Sousuke clicked the cylinder back into position. "I am accustomed to a nine millimeter weapon for the purpose of concealment."

"At least you're honest. Most of the guys had never even held a pistol before getting into this, and now you'll see the same guys whining that they didn't get a .50 caliber something-or-other." He laughed again. "It'd probably rip their arm off."

The man's sense of humor wasn't making Sousuke feel any more comfortable with the situation. He needed to see Corbin as fast as possible. He decided if he was going to risk saying something wrong, this was probably the man to say it to. "I do actually have a few questions."

"About the money? We get paid every two weeks, and it's a pretty good amount, but I'm sure your friend told you that."

"Where is he now?" Sousuke asked directly.

"Who? Louis?"

Sousuke furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. Had Corbin been using his real name? Or was the name on Sagara's briefing a fake? Sousuke responded, "Uh… yeah."

"Beats the heck out of me. Nobody ever knows where that son-of-a-gun is. Probably somewhere in the deck, though."

"The deck?"

"Man, he really didn't tell you _anything_ did he? You must be pretty desperate. Well, a young guy like you is probably looking at getting married and having a few kids in three or four years. Far be it from me to judge how you go about supportin' 'em. Although I would hope you'll be gettin' out of this line of work before the big day."

Sousuke scratched his head. "Actually, I don't really—"

"Don't sweat it, kid, we try not to really talk about our personal lives around here. Sort of an unspoken rule, y'know? Sorry to pry. Anyhow, 'the deck' is the parking deck a few blocks down."

"Oh, I saw that when I… dropped in." Sousuke wasn't sure if "dropping in" was a proper figure of speech to use here, as it had been some time since he'd used English in casual conversation. Regardless of how well it fit, the irony was not lost on him.

"You know it? Well, that's pretty much the worst part of town these days. Ever since the Spec Ops swept through here a few years back, that is."

"I was not informed of this area's recent history."

"L.A.'s not what it used to be, 'specially around here. I don't really have time to tell you the whole story, but I'm sure you'll catch it sooner or later. Now that you're here I've gotta report in, and you've gotta get over to the deck. The big guy is coming back to town tomorrow, so they're probably going to whip you into shape before then. I don't envy you right now, that's for sure. Your buddy Louis will be there later on, I think."

"That is reassuring. Thank you."

"Don't mention it. One more piece of advice before you go."

Sousuke tucked the barrel and cylinder of the revolver under his waistband.

"I don't know a whole lot about you, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out you know what you're doing. Ask me? I think you oughtta hold back your skills for a little while, especially tonight. You might impress some people like me with 'em, but you also might tick off some of the other guys. Not everyone's like me, Louis, and the other guys I've been talking about. The higher ranked fellas are mostly a dirty lot. They won't think twice about giving you a bloody nose, and they definitely won't think twice about shooting you if you put up a fight."

"Hmm…," Sousuke considered for a moment. "That is sound advice."

"Take the north entrance to the deck at the ground level. You'll see the ramp leading down. They know a new guy's coming, but don't be slow getting that card out. The guys at the gate won't show up until you show the card. It's a security measure."

"Understood."

"Alright, good luck to ya. I've gotta report in and get home." He stood up with a grunt indicating that he was sore. "Dang… hate to face the wife every night coming home from this." He hid the M-16 behind the crates he had been sitting on and opened the inside door, motioning Sousuke to enter first.

Inside was a typical pawn shop setup. The inventory was sparse, so the whole place might have just been a cover for the sort of operations Sagara had just become involved in, but it was possible the place still did business. He decided not to ask any questions about the location.

The man opened the glass front door. "I'll lock up when you're out. See you around."

"Roger. Thanks." Sousuke stepped out into the cool night breeze and listened to the deadbolt latch in behind him. Although he wasn't used to the size and shape of the gun, it felt good being armed again. He would have to consciously limit himself in the number of shots he fired if it became necessary. He wasn't given any extra ammunition, and even if he had some, six bullets before a reload wasn't much.

In just his short while in Mithril, Sousuke had heard many stories about "the fastest shooters alive." According to his colleagues, nearly all of them used revolvers. Semi-automatics had a tendency to jam during a particularly fast reload sequence, and normal semi-automatics required racking the slide once after a reload if the last bullet had been fired.

The silhouette of a raven or some large, black bird passed over Sousuke's head as he was looking around. The quiet urban atmosphere gently tugged away some of the urgency he had been feeling since his landing. As he began walking, his thoughts drifted back to his new weapon.

Sousuke wasn't sure he bought into the advantages of the revolver. After all, he never fired the last bullet before reloading, making it one step easier with a semi-automatic. Since joining Mithril he'd been happily using a Glock 26, a 9x19mm pistol which had no standard safety. There were three separate safety measures, all built into the trigger and firing pin. The long and the short of it was that this weapon had little or no chance of firing due to foreign objects or dropping, but it was ready to fire with a determined trigger pull at any time. To an average person or even an average soldier, this might have seemed like an insignificant feature. To Sousuke, who was now inspecting a sturdy .357 magnum revolver, it was quite significant. The reliability aspect of a revolver was partly due to the general lack of safeties. Classic weapons like the Colt Single Action Army lacked a transfer bar ignition system, meaning a bullet would go flying if the thing was jostled too hard. Modern revolvers had this system which kept a chambered bullet from misfiring. The Glock he had been using, then, seemed to have at least one of the advantages of the revolver—namely being a relatively safe but ready-to-fire weapon; and it kept the best aspect of a semi-automatic: a magazine capacity that doubled the revolver he was carrying.

In the end, his preference for a weapon that was sitting quietly and deep inside a massive submarine over a thousand miles away didn't amount to much. Sousuke could hope that he wouldn't have more than six people to kill at a given time. Sousuke could've hoped that regardless.

The street was empty, and midnight had probably passed a while ago. Sagara found himself reminded of Jesse's warning in disguise. "There's still time for you to back out." There was no way for him to know what he was getting himself into, but whatever it was, it was pretty big. A half hour in private with Corbin couldn't come too soon.

As Sousuke continued walking, the parking deck's upper levels slowly came into view over the tops of the other buildings. When he was close enough, he counted six levels, with the seventh being the top. There was no way to tell from here, but Sagara wondered if the two persons he had seen before landing were still at the top. He walked the street he had landed on in the M9, casually inspecting the damage to the asphalt. The average passer-by might have overlooked the cracks as due to the usual sinking of the ground underneath. Someone with a little more experience with Arm Slaves would probably have been able to tell one had been dropped here. There was no use worrying about it, though, because it would be quite difficult to hide something like this. With a sour taste in his mouth that was the irritation at thinking his landing could have been a mistake, Sousuke rounded the last corner of the silent streets and saw the gentle-sloped ramp that led to the ground level of the parking deck.

A single, pale red security light was the only thing illuminating the gate area. Sousuke checked that his pistol was properly concealed but ready to be drawn if necessary, then removed his card from his pocket as he neared the top of the ramp. A tingling sensation at the back of his neck told him that there was a sniper in an adjacent building with his crosshairs on Sousuke's back. He could almost feel heat at the exact spot in which the marksman was aiming. With a few well placed steps and a lot of trust in his own instinct, Sousuke could whirl around and fire several shots in the close vicinity of the sniper. Of course, an experienced gunman would simply return fire calmly and take him out with a single shot. A less experienced gunman, if he was not hit by the first two or three bullets, would simply run to cover and surely alert the guards inside the parking deck of the hostility. This was, of course, assuming that they didn't hear the rather loud report of a revolver.

His odds of survival if met with hostility were, as Sousuke carefully calculated, exactly nil. It was in this sort of situation that one could only reduce his own apparent threat level as much as possible, and then, if one were religious, he would pray.

Faced with undeniable mortality for the thousandth time, Sousuke walked as quickly as he dared (which was quite slowly) towards the gate. The stale smell of motor oil and electrical lighting was slight, but noticeable. There was a metal arm-style barrier for both entrance and exit, and a beat up card reader console next to the former. To the right of both was the small office where the security guard would normally be. No one was there now, but Sousuke spotted a few rounds of rifle ammunition on the counter inside because the security light was only a meter away from the glass enclosure. Sousuke put both hands up, showing his palms. In his right hand, between his index and middle finger, was the ID card. He stopped a few meters away from the barriers and stood in the middle of the ramp silently.

He felt several pairs of eyes on him moments later. He dared not look in their direction lest they consider it hostility. But if they were to have suddenly disappeared, Sousuke could've placed a marker exactly between where their two feet stood… all four pairs of them. The tactical analysis of the situation hadn't improved. If he was fast enough to take down four armed guards and get out of the way of the sniper who was now aiming at his head, he would then have to contend with indiscernible numbers of enemies on his way out. So then, a review of the situation demanded the same thing from him as it did fifteen seconds ago.

To his right, a safety clicked off. Immediately after, to the left, came a voice from the shadows. "Don't move. That means your hands, your eyes, everything."

Sousuke stared straight forward. He didn't have to look at them to know what they were doing. They slowly surrounded him. Two of them had semi-automatic pistols pointed at him. If Sousuke had to guess the caliber without looking, he'd probably have said .45. He could've said for sure if one of them was to fire. The other two were carrying submachine guns. They were newer weapons, probably MP5's. No hands were shaking, and no breathing was clearly audible. These men were not amateurs.

One of the guards behind Sousuke walked silently up to him. Sagara jerked in feigned surprise when the ID card was snatched out of his hand.

"Keep still, we're going to take that gun off your hands for you."

A man in front pulled up Sousuke's uniform shirt and removed the revolver. Now two of them were within a meter radius. In a few seconds, Sagara could've knocked both unconscious with blows to the head, caught the most easily accessible weapon they dropped, and shot the other two. In the chaos the sniper would likely have missed his first shot, too. But it was too risky. Discounting the two within arm's reach, it was three armed men with loaded weapons aimed at one unarmed man with nowhere to run to should he successfully escape the close vicinity.

Sousuke watched the man open the cylinder. A grin appeared on his face and he motioned for the nearest guard to come next to him. When he did so, the first guard pointed at the back of cylinder. The second guard laughed quietly.

Sagara rolled his eyes. He said quietly, "That ammunition is still more powerful than what is in the submachine guns behind me."

He immediately detected movement behind him, but before he could react, he felt the blunt impact of the submachine gun stock against the back of his head. He watched the two men in front of him spin in his vision while he collapsed painfully to the ground, and then lost consciousness.

(to be continued…)


	6. Chapter 6: The Other Operative

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Chapter 6

_Author's Note: As I mentioned in my profile, I apologize for the delay in posting this chapter. Hopefully it won't happen again. For those of you who are interested, Shougeki is doing fairly well on the stats, however it's getting about half the hits that WFD and Hito did at the same point. Anyway, hope you enjoy Chapter 6._

----

Kaname rubbed her eyes sleepily.

"You appear tired. You should go back to sleep." Sousuke was still leaning against the glass with his arms folded.

"No, I wanna hear the rest of this, Sou—" Chidori's sentence was interrupted by a silent yawn of considerable length. "…Sousuke. But let me go to the bathroom first."

Sagara nodded to her and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling once more. Kaname was continuing to rub her face while making little grumbling noises subconsciously. She slid the door open and walked inside without looking.

Sousuke heard the door slide mostly closed behind her. In truth, he was also feeling sleepy, but there was something about the atmosphere and watching Chidori listening to him so intently…. Sagara never considered himself much of a storyteller, but the memories of days past were clearer now than they had been before, almost as though he was dreaming while awake. He rubbed the hair on the back of his head. He could almost feel the blunt stock of the weapon hitting him even now—

**Thump.**

Sousuke whirled around. Nothing had hit him. The curtain blocked his vision of whatever had made the noise inside. He walked the few steps to the door and peered into the room.

Now, Sagara was a serious sort of fellow. Not much made him laugh or smile. There wasn't really time for it. The situations and jokes that his classmates found humorous rarely had any effect on him. The scene currently before him was no exception, but even he found it rather… awkward.

On the floor was a body in blue striped pajamas. Blue hair was spread across the floor, covering Kaname's head and face. She was moving slightly, and appeared rather disoriented. Next to her, apparently, was Tessa, who was on her back in shorts and the t-shirt she slept in during this "vacation" to Tokyo and Jindai High School. She might've been knocked out, or maybe she was sleeping. Either way, it was clear the two had collided. On Tessa's wrist was attached a pair of handcuffs. The other side had been opened, and a mangled paper clip was sticking out of the key hole on that side. A half opened shoji showed entrance to the room she had been sleeping in. Blocking that entrance was a sleeping Melissa (as evidenced by an open mouth and some snoring), who had one arm stretched above her head and towards the living room. The handcuffs must have been removed in this position.

While Sousuke was contemplating the relative difficulty of picking the lock on a pair of handcuffs using only a paper clip, Chidori managed to stand up. Hair still covered her face and head entire.

The human-shaped blue mop turned to the door slowly. Sousuke swallowed and slid the door open.

"Sousuke." It was a statement, not a question or a request for attention.

"Yes, Chidori?"

Kaname stood silent for several moments, presumably looking at Sagara through a layer of hair.

After some time without movement or speech between the two had past, Tessa made a groaning noise as she picked her self up. She sat on her ankles and rubbed her eyes.

She turned around and looked at him blearily. "Sergeant…."

"Ma'am!" Sousuke sounded his affirmative sharply, and stiffened his stance to attention.

"You were telling Chidori-san a story… I wanna hear it, too."

Kaname groaned briefly and walked toward the bathroom with her shoulders drooping.

"Of course, Captain." Sousuke was staring straight ahead, as was typical of this position.

"Yay…," Tessa sounded only mildly excited, and crawled towards the door slowly. Sousuke's eyes wandered to the lifeless Mao, whose purpose here was Sagara's salvation—markedly lacking at the moment. He found himself silently hoping she would wake up right about now by some miracle.

Tessa, in her heretofore modest but increasingly figure-accenting clothing (given her position), had reached the doorway and Sagara's bare feet. She looked up at him with noticeably more cognizant eyes than her previously slurred speech might have implied.

"Please continue your story, Sagara-san." She smiled with a slightly cocked head and closed eyes while she sat on her ankles again, like a small child being told an interesting story by a school teacher.

Sousuke coughed once and cleared his throat. His throat, in fact, felt a little tight. There was no uniform collar to unbutton, so that must not have been it. He couldn't remember where he had left off with Chidori, and it was no longer in question whether Kaname would be displeased with the scene when she emerged from the bathroom.

As though his thoughts had some effect on events in reality, the toilet flushed and Chidori emerged from the bathroom.

She looked briefly at the two, then averted her eyes quickly and headed straight for the bedroom.

"Uh… Chido—"

"What?" She responded flatly, about to open the shoji.

"Please…" Sousuke gave her _that_ look. The eyes that showed concern for her in the hospital one frightful night. The face that a few days ago had accompanied a request for Kaname to stay here at his apartment because Tessa would be there and Melissa had not yet arrived.

Both those times it had been irritating. Now the look was expected, and based on Sousuke's sickness which had not yet dissipated, Kaname couldn't find it in herself to make him suffer again.

"I'm just going to get something for my hair." She disappeared into the room, leaving the door open.

Sousuke's entire body relaxed and he let out a great sigh of relief. So pointed was his reaction that one might have thought he had just been told "your pathology report came back negative."

Chidori reappeared, tying a red ribbon in her hair and making a concerted effort to look pleasant.

"We should finish the story inside," she said. "It's getting a little cold out there." She looked at Tessa's bare legs and rolled her eyes.

Looking down, the "teach me" position the Captain was in brought grim memories to Sousuke's mind. Being called "coach…," Tessa having a white strip over the bridge of her nose…, a particularly devastating few hours of instruction in an M9…, and a disturbingly convenient fall from the ladder leading to the Arm Slave's cockpit onto Sousuke.

Sagara slowly made his way around Tessa and into the room, sidestepping to keep as much distance from her as possible. She rotated as though she were on a turntable, and kept that eyes-closed smile pointed straight at him while he self-consciously closed the glass door.

"Tessa!"

She jumped and her eyes opened wide. She looked over at Kaname in surprise, having been totally unaware of her presence until now. "Wh—what is it, Kaname-san?"

Chidori held her forehead in one hand and shook her head. "Can we just get on with the story, Sousuke?"

After briefly glancing at each of the three young women in sight, Sagara nodded.

When he began speaking, Kaname pulled a chair out from the nearby table and sat down on it backwards. She rested her chin on folded arms which lay on the top of the chair's backrest. Then Tessa lay down on her stomach, also resting her chin on her crossed forearms on the floor and kicking her feet in the air happily. This wasn't the first time that those two had looked very similar.

Sousuke began pacing slowly across the floor as he continued.

----

When he awoke with a dull pain in the back of his head, Sagara's first thought was simple. _Why didn't I notice the enemy behind me?_

There wasn't much time to ponder his mistake, as he heard a heavy door open nearby.

"Figured you'd be smart enough to keep your mouth shut the first time you got here." The stern voice came from behind. Sousuke turned around. He wasn't tied up, and was now sitting with his back to the corner of a small, unpainted concrete room. There were two doors, so it wasn't likely an interrogation room… officially. Sagara assumed he was within the lower levels of the parking deck.

"And you are?" Sousuke asked coarsely.

"Hmm…." The man was about six feet in height, with dark hair. He was facing away from Sousuke with his arms folded, rubbing his chin slowly with one hand. "I'll answer your question with another question."

"That will not suffice," Sousuke said immediately.

"Perhaps you should hear the question first."

Sagara paused for a moment. "…Alright."

"Have you seen any silver metals lately?"

"Silver metals…." Sousuke was confused for a moment, and then it hit him. _Mithril._ "I may have. Show yourself."

The man turned around slowly with his arms still crossed. He had a small, uncanny grin on his face. "Here."

He took something from inside his black jacket. Strangely, Sagara noticed, the man was dressed entirely in black. His hair and eyebrows and eye color were all similarly very dark. A silver handgun flew through the air. Sousuke caught it.

The operative spoke again. "Didn't get a chance to put any real ammunition in it yet. Figured doing that would've kept you out of any more trouble."

The statement left a sour taste in Sagara's mouth. It was true that his mention to the four armed men was devoid of any strategic intelligence.

The man's tone changed. "I'll spare you the obvious questions. They trusted me. They don't trust you. And because they don't trust you, now they don't trust me either."

"Because you were the one to get me here."

"Quite right."

"Then my next question should be equally obvious."

"Of course. The answer is that this room is only partially sound proof."

"And that camera?" Sousuke looked at the small security camera in one corner.

"Sad story. The techie that had all of this stuff ticked off the big guy."

"I take it that did not end well."

"You're on a roll, man. Sure didn't. He's dead. That camera never got hooked up to the main network." The operative walked closer to Sousuke.

Sagara confirmed that he looked like the portrait on his briefing.

"The man at the pawn shop called you Louis."

"Nobody uses their real names here."

The statement could've had half a dozen different meanings. Since he didn't lower his voice, Sousuke could assume that either Louis wasn't his real name, or Louis _was_ his real name, but no one here believed it was.

"Just call me Corbin. You don't seem like the kind of guy who uses first names."

Corbin's coat appeared to be wool. It was open in the front, revealing a black button-up shirt which was tucked into black slacks. Sousuke didn't see any evidence of a concealed weapon on him.

"You're not armed," he said flatly.

"I was a minute ago."

"You trust me that much?"

"I have to." After these words, Corbin's volume increased slightly. Sousuke detected it, too. Someone was nearby. "Listen, we've got a lot to catch up on, old friend, but now isn't the time."

_'Old friend.'_ Sousuke's opinion of this operative was increasing exponentially. Louis's instinct had told him someone was close by without any audible warning… and it had told him that exactly as it did to Sagara. Responding to this, Corbin had deliberately guised his next sentence.

There was, however, another possibility. This man was in the intelligence department at Mithril. If he had the same sort of warrior instinct that Sousuke had, he'd probably be with a response team in Sagara's own division. So then, perhaps he had set up some sort of proximity surveillance system. It could've been a personal device designed for this specific purpose. Sousuke's inhibitions on what present-day technology could accomplish had been all but shattered since joining Mithril. If his division had ECS and ECCS, then certainly the intelligence division could have something like this. Regardless of which of these possibilities was true, the man was impressive.

Sousuke tried to keep the conversation going in order to dissuade any possible concerns from the eavesdropping third party.

"I was told that the manager of this operation is returning tomorrow."

"Got that right. The third shift boys are gonna show you around. They also might take you to the firing range." Corbin knelt down next to Sousuke who was still sitting in the corner. He spoke quickly and quietly. "I heard about your training for you-know-what. Might want to use the same tactic here."

With that, Louis stood up and walked towards one of the doors. He turned back to Sagara for a moment in mid-stride. "You'll be on the same shift as me after tonight. See you."

He opened the door and blinked in surprise. There was a man armed with a submachine gun standing there.

"Whoa. Sorry man, didn't know anybody was here." Corbin walked past him and out of view. His heavy footsteps died away slowly.

Sousuke reached behind his head and rubbed the sore spot slowly. The "same tactic" the operative had mentioned referred to what Sagara had done during training and selection for Mithril. Unsure of the organization's motives and affiliations, Sousuke had deliberately hidden his combat skills, achieving rather unspectacular scores on each recorded exercise. The eventual discovery of his talent was all history now. The idea of using it again if given the opportunity to display his abilities was a given. Sagara didn't need Corbin to suggest it. If Sousuke started nailing bulls'-eyes and reloading in half the time the others did, it would raise suspicions that he could be a double agent. The fact that he now had a revolver instead of his normal semi-automatic would add to the authenticity of his feint. The real question was, how did Corbin know about his history? The answer to the question was obvious: Because Louis was in the intelligence division. He knew everything. But even so, he had been on the field since requesting backup, which left only two possibilities: Either Corbin had some means of getting top secret information while here in enemy territory, or he had not only researched, but memorized, the information of Special Response Team members. Neither option should've been too surprising to Sagara at this point.

"I'm not supposed to be here." The annoyed voice of the man with the SMG came from the doorway. "But the others won't be down for a few minutes, and I figured I'd give you a few _pointers_ for the future."

He was walking towards Sousuke, who stood up. He had the firearm at his side, holding it by the mounting bracket which had probably held a scope previously.

"First thing," he said to a silent Sagara, "is that you don't get that attitude with me or any of the other guys."

This man had been either the one laughing at the low-power ammunition or the one who had knocked Sousuke unconscious. If it was the latter, Sagara was a bit concerned. After all, he hadn't even seen the blow coming.

"I don't know what skills Corbin or you _think_ you have, but all I see is a punk kid in places he shouldn't be."

Verbally, he was just like a hundred other armed idiots that Sousuke had evaded, shot, or simply ignored in his past. He chose the third option and began walking towards the door without looking at him.

Time seemed to slow down as he came within a meter of the guard dressed in a Kevlar vest. When Sousuke brushed by him, he felt it coming.

_Looks like "that tactic" starts now_, he thought solemnly.

As Sagara turned, the man's fist connected with his jaw.

(to be continued…)


	7. Chapter 7: High Security

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

_Author's Note: Chapter 6 has been edited since posting. The only change is the last line. "As Sagara turned, the man's fist connected with his jaw." has been changed to "..connected with his upper cheek." This was an editing mistake and apparently I posted an older version of Chapter 6. Nothing else changed, though. Sousuke still gets nailed. Enjoy Chapter 7!  
_

_-Eso _

Chapter 7

----

"Ohh…," Tessa had come to a revelation. "So that's how you got that bruise."

"Yeah." Sousuke said plainly.

"What?" Kaname asked of Tessa.

"When he came back from this mission everybody was talking about Sergeant Sagara's black eye. They were all pretty surprised."

"So you couldn't dodge it, Sousuke?" Chidori asked in surprise.

"No, in fact it was the opposite. I probably had an entire second between when I noticed his blow coming and when it actually connected. That second was spent forcing myself _not_ to move."

"Ohh… I think I understand why." Kaname's sleepiness had faded when Sagara began talking about the other operative. "So it hurt pretty bad, huh?"

"It looked painful when I saw it almost a week and a half later," said Tessa.

Sousuke replied while looking at the ceiling, which was a habit he had acquired just tonight while telling the story. "Unfortunately this impact didn't knock me out. It was quite agonizing. However, I would have been pleased if it was the worst thing to happen."

Kaname's eyes widened. "Why? What else happened?"

Tessa sat up, shaking her head solemnly. "Let him continue…." She took a deep breath and sighed at length. "He might not want to tell that part anyway."

Sousuke backed up slowly to the wall. He slid down slowly to a sitting position and rested his forearms on his knees. He didn't make eye contact with either of the girls, but instead continued his account.

----

It was starting to become a bit irritating to Sousuke that he was either on the wrong end of a rifle or being hit by something hard quite often lately.

Sagara made a loud noise when he was struck. Staggering and barely maintaining his balance, he was having a difficult time resisting the urge to return the blow tenfold.

Before the assailant could throw out more insults, the sound of footsteps was heard. They reached the door quickly.

"You idiot!" screamed the guard who had just rushed in.

_Actually, he screamed something a lot stronger than that, but I will omit the unnecessary dialogue._

The guard who had struck Sousuke looked back angrily at the new arrival. "He tried to jump me so I hit him."

"Like I'd believe that! You keep picking fights with other men and you're gonna be the next one to get your throat slit." The guard walked over to Sagara.

The first guard seemed to have been silenced by the statement, and after a few seconds he walked quickly out of the door with only an angry glare towards the both of them.

Sousuke stood up while holding his hand over the bruised eye. "Thanks…."

"Yeah," the guard replied. "I may have defended you, but that doesn't mean I trust you. That guy who just left might be the most hot-headed bastard I've ever seen, but we all know where his loyalties lie. As for you…."

Sagara replied simply, "I don't expect you to trust me. But Corbin does."

"Yeah? Well Corbin freaks me out. He's way too calm all the time. Looks like you're the same way."

"Are you here to train me?"

"Geez, you long-time mercenaries are all the same. Straight to business."

Sousuke couldn't help being a little sarcastic. "Seems like no one else around here cares much."

"You don't get to trust people by staying shut up like you two do."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but we _are_ doing something illegal here, right? I don't see a lot of opportunity for trust."

The guard sighed. "I'm beginning to understand why he hit you."

"But it wasn't him who knocked me out on the ramp." Sousuke said it mostly to himself.

"How are you so sure?"

"He's roughly as stealthy as an RK-92."

"Heh… guess you've got a point. Anyway you're right, it wasn't him. The one who knocked you out was Chuck. His name isn't even Charles, but we call him Chuck anyway."

Sousuke looked confused.

"Never mind," said the guard. "Anyway Chuck is about as skittish as anybody gets. You mentioned shooting somebody, he knocked you out. That's it."

"What a crew. Is everyone from around here?"

"Nah, only a few like Jesse actually live around here. The rest of us are here as long as the job lasts."

"But they're all Americans."

"Yeah. Aren't you?"

Sagara mentally kicked himself. He had brought a troublesome question on himself. He didn't know what information Corbin had provided to these people. He may have been described as living in the United States.

He cleared his throat. "I was told I wouldn't have to reveal my background."

"Ah, what's it matter anyway? This is California. They let anybody in here." The guard laughed.

Sousuke stared.

"It was a joke."

"Oh." While looking at the amicable expression on the guard's face, the irony occurred to Sousuke that he could end up killing some or many of these people he'd be working with. Non-lethal forms of suppression were very unlikely to be available here.

"Hey, what's your name, anyway?"

"Jozef," Sousuke said immediately.

The guard stared in silence for a moment. "Isn't that a Dutch name?"

Sousuke honestly didn't know what the origin of the name was. He had hoped he wouldn't have to use it. "Well…."

"It's not like I believed for one second that it was your real name, but I figured you'd have something better than that. Oh well. Let's go."

When the guard turned around, Sagara finally saw his weapon—a Beretta—stuck under his belt at his back, roughly where Sousuke kept his own. The guard was wearing a dark colored uniform and black boots… but his getup wasn't nearly as pitch black as Louis Corbin's.

"You won't see many of the other guys right now. We've got a few on patrols and the rest are asleep. Everybody was double-checking everything to be sure it's in order for the boss."

They were walking through a complicated hallway with unfinished rooms on either side. The whole area appeared to have been the result of halted construction.

"Exactly what kind of work will I be doing?"

The guard stopped and looked back at Sousuke. "Corbin didn't tell you?"

Sagara shook his head.

"You're replacing a patrolman that the boss killed."

"Why was he killed?"

"Good question. None of us know. It's got us all a little edgy, like Dave. That's the guy who gave you that black eye just now."

Sousuke didn't need to be reminded. His entire face was throbbing.

The guard began walking again. "It probably means that the upstairs crew is finishing up, or a least moving to another stage."

"What happens upstairs?" Sagara followed at a distance.

"Well," the guard opened a heavy steel door which led to a very large, dark area. "Basically this whole operation is separated into the downstairs crew—that's us—and the upstairs crew. The ones up there make double our salary, and the only way you get up there is by impressing the boss. You'll see the downers around here acting like they're Navy SEALs if the boss is nearby. Still, everybody seems to know that Corbin will be the next to go up."

"Downers?" Sousuke followed the guard out of the door and into the darkness. It was difficult to see what was in the area apart from a few support pillars.

"That's what they call us. We're the rejects. The downstairs crew."

"I see. What separates Corbin from the rest of the group?"

The guard whirled around. "See, this is why I don't trust you." He pointed an accusing finger. "You're supposed to be all buddy-buddy with Corbin but you don't even know what he's good at."

Sousuke cleared his throat again. "Our experience together was several years ago. Since then neither of us have been in a situation where we can discuss our work."

"Several years ago? You're what, eighteen? Nineteen? You're telling me you were a mercenary when you were fourteen or fifteen?"

"Is it so hard to believe?"

The guard growled in exasperation. He sighed. "I guess not. Don't know many eighteen year olds who get punched in the face and say nothing about it."

"I am aware of Corbi—Louis's work before this operation, but I have no reason to divulge that information to you."

The guard began walking once again. "You were the one who asked what makes him different, kid."

"Correct, but you do not have to answer."

"The guy is a fortune teller. He always knows what's going to happen, where it's going to happen, and when it's going to happen."

"That is interesting."

"He knew the patrolman you're replacing was going to get killed. We all thought it was him who did it until we found out it was the boss. That's why everybody knows he's the next in line. And frankly, we're glad to get him out of here. He's like a bad omen or something."

"When are people promoted like this?"

"Down here people seem to get killed a lot. Up there it doesn't really happen that way. We don't know for sure when the boss is going to get somebody new."

Sagara could feel a night breeze flowing through the huge room, but all he saw in the direction of the wind was darkness.

"You never answered my question about what goes on upstairs."

"That's because I don't know. None of us do. We're here to do the dirty work and get paid pretty well for it."

"So then you can hire anyone you want without risk of sabotaging the operation."

"Pretty much. Think we'd get somebody like you or Dave if not?" The guard dug into his pocket and removed a rectangular object with a strap on it.

"What is that?" Sousuke asked out of sheer curiosity.

"The correct question is 'What are those?' And they're infrared goggles." He placed equipped them over his eyes and secured the strap. "You might want to follow me close for the next while."

Sagara shortened the distance between them by a few feet and traced his footsteps. The guard was looking down and occasionally changing his course. Sousuke could smell dust burning. It was becoming apparent that there were some trip wires at about knee height.

He asked directly, "Obviously light-sensitive trip wires have been around for well over a decade, but I had thought using a laser powerful enough to burn something or cause damage was only for the science fiction movies."

"It still is. This doesn't use any lasers."

Sousuke considered the possibilities. The first thought that sprung into mind was a claymore mine. These had trip wires and an explosive connected to them that essentially acted like a sawed off shotgun. These mines would easily kill or incapacitate anyone who triggered them. But if they were claymore mines, they would simply use tension cable for triggering, which would not explain the burning smell or the guard using infrared.

Infrared meant that either heat or a light source was being used. If there were no lasers, heat was the only option, which would also explain the burning.

"So the heat components are only for visibility," he said.

The guard replied, "Yeah, it's an extremely high voltage circuit with resistors in various places to mark the wires."

"Ingenious. How high off the floor are the wires?"

"About fifteen inches."

"Fifteen inches? Couldn't someone crawl under them?"

"Sure, if they felt like igniting their clothes. Besides, it'd take a pretty small person to get under that."

"So what happens if the wires are simply cut with a rubber handled tool?"

"Obviously an alarm goes off. Plus the circuit isn't one loop. You'd have to cut through a whole lot of wires to get through… and you'd have to do it before twenty guards came down here and shot you."

"I suppose the next question is obvious."

"'Why is this area so well guarded?' Because this is one of two gateways to the upper levels."

"Two gateways?"

"There's only one way up. You have to get through this and another security measure that none of us downers know anything about. We just know not to cross the red line."

"So it leads to the upper levels…. This isn't the bottom floor?"

"You're asking too many questions, kid, and I'm starting to sweat here."

Sousuke was beginning to sweat as well. They had gone nearly ten yards forward in a counter-intuitive, mazelike path, and it was only getting hotter as they neared the concrete wall that Sousuke could now barely make out.

The guard let out a deep breath and took off his goggles. "We're good now, just don't go backwards any."

"Why did we come here?"

"The weapons cache is between the two gateways."

"I already have a revolver."

"But no ammunition. We're going to the firing range later, figured I'd get this chore out of the way first."

"I see."

The guard walked over to an unmarked door and inserted a key. When he opened the door he started laughing. "Every time I open this door I think… what sort of idiot robber would go through a huge web of electrified wires, come up to this door, try to turn the knob and say 'Well dang, it's locked. Guess I'll go back.'"

"That would be rather unintelligent, yes," said Sousuke with no particular emotion.

"You've got the sense of humor of a marshmallow, don't you, kid?"

"A marshmallow?"

"Yeah, okay, my jokes suck."

Sousuke was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. The thought hadn't left him: He might end up killing this man before his mission was through.

The guard walked inside and turned on a bare light bulb on a simple fixture mounted to the ceiling. "Sorry, we don't have any 38 Special."

Sagara rolled his eyes. He looked inside to find mostly the same weapons he'd already seen. There were assault rifles and submachine guns, handguns and a few shotguns.

"Just kidding, kid. Here you go." The guard handed him two large boxes of magnum ammunition.

Sousuke looked at the guard and then at the boxes he was holding. Five hundred rounds. This was enough to supply an entire squad of Special Forces for half a dozen missions. When he looked at the .357 printed on the white label on one side, he thought of something.

"Hey, while we're here could I—?" Sousuke stopped his sentence short. He was about to ask to trade his revolver for one of the many semi-automatics he saw in the small room, but he changed his mind.

"What?"

"Could I… take a stun grenade as well?" He had thought of a better way to complete the question.

"You mean a flashbang? Well… I'm probably not supposed to, but if you're asking for it you probably know how to use it better than anybody else around here anyway. Which one is it?"

The fact that the guard could not immediately tell the difference between flashbangs and the smoke and concussion grenades which were next to them was somewhat encouraging to Sousuke, although he would have to admit that anyone who took a few seconds to look at each grenade could determine their purpose by construction if not the clear labeling.

"They're the ones with holes in the body."

"Oh yeah, that makes sense." He picked up one and handed it to Sousuke, who quickly realized he had no utility belt to attach it to.

The guard closed the door behind him and locked it. "Do us both a favor and don't drop any of that on the wires when we go back."

(to be continued…)


	8. Chapter 8: Price of Morality

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Chapter 8

----

When the two had successfully navigated the wire maze, Sousuke's curiosity drove him to ask more questions. Normally he'd have held them in, but he expected that this information would be mission-critical in the future.

"Does everyone get a pair of those?" He asked when the guard took off the goggles.

"No, out of everyone downstairs, only I have them."

"Only you?" Sousuke looked at him with inquisitive eyes. "Wait, that mean's that you're—"

"The boss of the downstairs crew."

Sousuke had been taken off guard by the revelation. This man had been speaking to both Sousuke and Dave, the guard who punched Sagara, as though he was just another mercenary.

"I don't like to act all high and mighty," he said at last. He took a right turn about halfway between the wire maze and the door that they had come out of originally. At least half way is what Sousuke guessed. It was far too dark to tell. "Not exactly worth bragging about anyway."

"Meaning?"

"Would you go announcing you were the best of the worst?"

"Point taken."

"Besides, if I tell the new guys right off the bat, they start trying to show off, which usually ends with them embarrassed, hurt, or even killed."

"By the upstairs boss, I assume."

"Well, no, actually, that's not what I meant. We had a guy that thought he was hot stuff. That revolver you've got, it was a replacement."

"A replacement for what?"

"For the revolver that killed that guy. See, it was one of those older models that would misfire if jostled too hard."

"Ironic. I was just thinking about those models when I originally got this weapon." Sousuke would have taken out his gun to inspect it had he not been carrying the ammunition boxes and the flashbang. "I take it the death was accidental, then."

"He was doing the Old West thing."

"Old West thing?"

"You're not American, you might not know. I'm talking about spinning the weapon by the finger guard."

"Ah."

"Anyway he was pretty good at it, so he had a bunch of the other guys gathered around to show off some of the more complicated stuff. I guess he didn't know much about older revolvers, or he was so cocky that he didn't think it would misfire. He dropped the thing in the middle of one of his tricks. Grip hit the ground at his feet. A .45 round went right up his chin under the jaw near the throat. Probably traveled through the back of his tongue, the nasal passages, and then to the brain, cause he was dead instantly."

"…."

"Sad stuff."

"That brings another question to mind. If all these people are being killed, how are the bodies disposed? And how is there still any order in the operation?"

The guard reached the door he was looking for and opened it for Sousuke, who went in first.

"Well, you can probably tell it's not exactly relaxed around here. Chuck and Dave are proof of that." He flipped a switch inside the door that lit up an indoor staircase, which he began climbing.

Footsteps echoed noisily as they ascended. Once Sousuke was one floor up, he could plainly see the destroyed stairs above. If the floor they had left was the ground floor, then he was on the first floor. The second floor was accessible, but above that every single staircase had been destroyed. There were some small mechanical units attached to the wall as well, which were likely security devices against someone simply using a grappling hook to make their way to the upper floors.

The guard continued his response. "As for the body disposal, you'd be surprised to know that you're the first person to ask. I guess the others found it a little too morbid to inquire about. Clearly you're not the squeamish type anyway. Jesse probably told you, like he tells everybody, that we try to stay out of each others' personal lives, so I won't actually ask what I was about to."

"Go ahead and ask," Sousuke said. Perhaps if he was more open with this person he could get more information out of him.

"How many people have you killed?"

Sousuke was silent. The guard was standing with the first floor door ajar, and Sousuke hadn't stepped through yet.

"It's gotta be more than three or four. I can see it in your eyes."

There wasn't any good way—or good reason—to avoid the question. "More than I can readily count."

"Kid your age wouldn't be here unless he had a mercenary background. I shouldn't have asked that. I bet you're someone who just grew up with it like this. Hell, it's not like the rest of us are saints." He let his head fall back and thump against the steel door. "We all know what we're doing, and we know how likely it is we'll be dead or arrested before it's done with. Somehow we all end up here, though, with no other path."

It was a grim statement. Sagara stayed silent.

"Everybody's got a price tag on their morality." The guard let the door swing closed as he led Sousuke onward.

----

"That's why we sent you."

Tessa had interrupted Sousuke in mid-sentence.

"What?" he said incredulously.

"Because we weren't sure anybody else could do it."

Kaname and Sousuke were silent until Tessa spoke again.

"Getting to know the people you were going to kill, I mean."

"You knew my past," Sousuke said in a low voice.

"Yes."

"And you exploited it."

"Yes."

Sagara sighed. "Even if you'd told me all this at the beginning—"

"You'd have gone anyway," Tessa completed his thought.

"Yeah." Sousuke's affirmative had a hint of surprise in it.

"We didn't know that at the time."

Sagara stood up and began staring at his bare feet. "Loyalty from mercenaries. What a ridiculous concept."

"You're not the first to say that, Sergeant. Aren't you going to finish it?"

"Finish what, the story?"

"No, the thought." Tessa was still sitting down on the carpet, looking at Sousuke seriously. She was acting like the Captain, but she looked like any sixteen year-old in those clothes.

Sousuke turned his head and looked at the window. "…It's amazing Mithril is still around."

"You know who the other person to say that was?"

Kaname stood up from the chair, looking at either of the two Mithril employees with discomfort.

"I can take a guess."

"Jack Wayne," she said plainly.

"The previous Urzu 7."

Kaname audibly took a breath in. It was apparent she was about to say something, but when Tessa and Sousuke turned to hear, she bit her lip and stayed silent.

"What is it, Kaname-san?" Tessa asked.

"Well… I guess it's not that important, but…" She looked down at the top edge of the chair. She was running her thumb over the carved wood. "What happened to him?"

"Discharged," Tessa said simply.

"Oh."

There was a moment of very uncomfortable silence in the room.

Finally, Sousuke spoke. "Perhaps I'd better stop there." He began walking to the bedroom.

Tessa watched, making no effort to stop him.

When Sagara passed by Chidori, he felt her hand touch his wrist. He stopped and looked at her.

She saw the dark spots under his eyes. She couldn't have said whether they were from the depressing mood of the story and the conversation, or from the illness and subsequent sleeplessness he'd been having as of late.

"I'd like to hear the rest," she said. "…If you want to."

Sousuke looked back at Tessa.

"I won't interrupt again," she said.

Sagara looked at Kaname's hand, which slid off of his wrist slowly.

"Then I will continue."

----

When Sousuke walked through the door, he immediately felt the presence of many other people.

"Set those down next to the door," said the boss quietly, referring to the items Sousuke was carrying.

He did so. "Who are all these people?"

"You can see them?"

"No, but I know they're here."

"This is where we sleep. Better not talk too loud though. A bunch of these guys sleep with their guns."

"I can relate," Sousuke replied.

The room was completely dark. It was impossible for Sousuke to get his bearings.

"Why is it so dark in here?" he asked. "Isn't it open to the outside?"

"Yeah, it is. Follow me." The guard walked slowly while Sousuke followed, mostly blind. After they had gone a short distance, he turned.

Pale light flooded through an opening that he had made. Sagara could now see that they were in an area curtained off—floor to ceiling—from the sleeping area. They went through the opening.

Now he could see the mats where eight or nine men slept, and the empty mats of another few. Immediately Sousuke saw Corbin, still covered in black, asleep on his back near the curtain.

On every side was moonlight coming in through the open sides of the parking deck. The pillars closest to the sides were little more than black stripes as viewed from roughly the center. Behind Sousuke was the massive curtain spanning the entire length of the parking deck, and sectioning off about one third of the total area. The remaining area was quite large, as expected for such a structure, and consisted of these mats, a few tables, and a makeshift pair of shower stalls. These stalls were actually in the form of a trailer which had been parked in the corner, and must've contained a water heater and used a standard line from somewhere else in the structure.

How the water was being paid for in a structure that was supposed to be abandoned, or how the electricity here was being paid for, or how any number of clear indicators of activity in this building were going unnoticed…, all of these were mysteries unlikely to ever be resolved to Sagara.

The guard motioned for Sousuke to take a closer look around, but stayed silent. Probably whatever sound proofing the curtain had provided had been sufficient to speak at a normal level, but no longer was it so from this side.

Sousuke walked down the aisle separating the randomly placed mats and the tables. He looked at one table to find a deck of cards scattered about. On another were a couple of shot glasses and liquor bottles. On the mats, some of the men had a sleeping bag or some sheets, but most apparently slept uncovered. At this time of year the night air was quite temperate anyway. Pillows were makeshift, and usually consisted of rolled up garments. There were bags containing clothes, some scattered gun cleaning tools, and periodical magazines with blatantly pornographic covers.

On the far wall were two small curtained sections. These were probably changing areas for those paradoxical manners of men: those who would curse and kill, but would not change in front of other males.

Sagara walked back to the guard who still stood at the opening in the curtain. When they were behind the curtain and in the pitch dark again, Sousuke asked quietly, "Washrooms?"

"There's a sink in the other side of that trailer, and the toilet is a regular Portaloo behind it."

"Portaloo?" Sousuke asked.

"Eh, guess that's a UK thing. Portable toilet."

"Oh." Sousuke hadn't considered this man's nationality. He didn't have an easily detectable British accent. Actually, when Sagara thought about it, he didn't even know the man's name. Culture collisions made introductions difficult, and the subject of illegal and extremely secretive work didn't make it any easier.

More important questions were surfacing again. Sagara asked the most pertinent one first.

"Where are we going next?"

"Up to the firing range."

"Can we fire while they're asleep?"

The boss opened the door again. "There's always someone asleep since we work on shifts. This just happens to be the quietest time. It's a four hour period where all the guys agreed that if you're awake, you stay shut up. Sucks to be the guys who are on patrol during those hours. Oh, by the way… you're one of them."

"I see." Sousuke maintained his normal composure.

"As for the rest of the time, we've all gotten used to sleeping through the sound of gunshots. It's actually not that bad because of the sound dampening. You'll see in a minute."

They were halfway up the stairs.

"So who installed this sound dampening? And you didn't answer my question about the bodies."

"The answer to both is the same:" The guard paused at the door. "Don't ask. It's somebody from upstairs."

Sousuke couldn't help but notice the word "somebody" as opposed to "some people." Either this meant that he didn't know either—which seemed rather unlikely—or that there was actually one person who was doing both tasks… and arguably other specialist-necessitated tasks as well. And when he thought about whether this self-proclaimed 'downstairs boss' knew of the goings on 'upstairs,' Sousuke had to assume that the impression he'd gotten was false. In reality, the guard he had been talking to knew the whole operation from head to toe. At least that's what Sagara supposed. Chances were good that this man was simply putting on the friendly 'I'm just as bad off as you are' air for the sake of keeping the downstairs men calm and orderly.

If this assumption were true, it was good news mixed with bad. The good news would be that Sagara could interrogate him with Corbin's help. The bad news would be that covering up such knowledge of, and liaison with, the 'upstairs' implied that he was no ordinary mercenary.

"So the 'downstairs' is basically the foundation for the 'upstairs,'" Sousuke surmised, not really intending it to be heard.

"I'm either going to stare at you like an idiot or I'm going to say 'That was the worst pun I've ever heard,'" said the guard.

"What?"

"…At least it wasn't intentional. Yes, certainly without the downstairs men there'd be no upstairs operation."

He opened the door and led Sousuke inside.

"Moving on, how many people are involved in this operation?"

"Oh, I don't know. There's about fifteen of us downstairs. I don't know about upstairs."

Sousuke could read the last part of his reply as a lie without trying.

"So I suppose when I asked 'What happens upstairs?' you digressed because you don't know?"

"Something like that. Better watch it, though, kid."

Sagara didn't need to ask what it was he should be watching. He had already approached the dangerous limit of allowable questions before he would be under suspicion. Now would be a good time to start playing dumb again.

The guard's serious tone and expression changed into a grin. "But on another note, you'd better get ready to jump out of your skin."

"Why?"

"You're too young for her anyway."

"What?"

They were in an area similar to where they had just been—a floor to ceiling curtain partitioning one third of the floor away from the other. The guard moved to the opening just as Sousuke's confusion was at its peak.

The guard disappeared on the other side and the curtain fell closed again.

"I brought him," Sousuke heard the guard say.

Sagara slowly pulled one side of the curtain aside. He bent his head down to go under, and when he looked up on the other side, before he knew what was happening, he felt the tip of his nose brush cold metal.

Sousuke stared down the barrel of a weapon for the hundredth time too many. It was a suppressed pistol, but that wasn't what was surprising. What was surprising was what was behind it.

(to be continued…)


	9. Chapter 9: Firing Range

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Chapter 9

_Author's Note: Partly as an apology for being rather slow with chapter releases, I'm posting Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 tonight. Enjoy!_

----

The territory was different.

That was about the only reason Sagara could come up with. He was staring at a black suppressor with a perfectly straight face. Not a hint of surprise could be found on Sousuke right now. The only thought, in fact, that might've been detectable was his scrutiny.

The territory was different.

Why else would Sousuke have been in this situation so many times already? He tossed away all thoughts of the present situation, resigning his fate to the weapon bearer while he mentally replayed his previous encounters.

The pawn shop. Well, he had been expecting a hostile greeting. On some level—whether conscious or unconscious—he had been prepared for a situation similar to the assault rifle in his face. Perhaps it was less a mistake and more an unpleasant but unavoidable response.

The ramp. He'd been in a state of heightened awareness of enemy activity. He could've pointed almost directly at the sniper at any time. So why, then, was he taken off guard by the melee attack behind him? Was it really possible for someone to move that stealthily?

The holding room. Sousuke's assailant who was called "Dave" had successfully struck him in the face. The seconds before the blow were calculated. The fault here, if there was one, lied in the verbal encounter. Something Sagara had said had ultimately caused this—and possibly the previous—damage to his person. Pain from such impacts was of tertiary concern. Being knocked out as in the first instance or having one's vision impaired for an extended time as in the second instance… those were not acceptable consequences.

Now he could consider the current situation. Here the reasoning for failed detection was obvious. There was absolutely no violent intent in the person holding the weapon.

"He's a cute one."

It was a Walther P22. Subsonic ammunition was ideal for a suppressor, after all.

"Who gave him that black eye?"

Behind the Walther was a woman in a skin-tight uniform. The fabric was something Sousuke hadn't seen before. The top started part way up her neck and ended below her chest, leaving the stomach and lower back exposed. Sleeves covered half of the upper arms. The underarms were made of a different fabric. Daring to glance down, Sagara found similar patches of fabric behind the knees and at the inseam.

"Body armor." Sousuke stated.

"Mmm…. Cute _and_ smart." Her voice was airy, which left one thinking at the end of each sentence that she had enjoyed saying it far too much. She lowered the handgun.

The lesser boss was now sitting in a folding metal chair some distance away, and grinning. "She always sounds aroused when she talks. It drives the others mad."

The woman had light brown, shoulder length hair. She wore lipstick which had no color but added sheen to her lips. Her eyes were dark green, which only added to the mysteriousness.

"I bet it was that prick, Dave." She said coarsely. Her eyes narrowed in subtle anger.

"Right the first time," said the man in the chair.

"Oh…," the woman bit her lip. Her eyes turned empathetic. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't talk like that. It makes me less attractive." She holstered her weapon and slowly brought her hand up to Sousuke's eye while stepping closer.

Sagara stared into her eyes. He could get no bearing on her intentions.

She touched his temple where the bruise ended with one fingertip. She winced slightly and breathed in through her teeth, making a sound indicating pain. "That must've hurt. Nn—" She gasped.

Sousuke breathed steadily and watched her eyes which were dancing from place to place, looking him over.

She stepped closer again. Her chest brushed Sousuke's. "I'll make it feel better," she whispered with more than a hint of provocation.

She tilted her head and slid her fingers behind his neck. Smoothly she moved to kiss him.

Silence passed in the moment.

"…Ouch." The boss of the downstairs scratched his head.

Sagara had moved to one side in the split second before her lips met his. Instead they brushed his cheek during his dodge.

She stayed with her mouth near his ear. Sousuke stared straight over her shoulder at the shooting targets on the far wall.

The three in the room were silent and still for several seconds.

Finally, the woman coughed quietly. "That hurt…, _boy_."

The word "boy" had a scathing tone.

She stepped back from him. Her eyes now had a mixture of sadness and hatred in them. "You won't kiss me?"

Sousuke stared silently at her for several seconds before speaking. "I do not believe my job requires such a thing."

She looked away, taking an audible deep breath. Her eyes were clearly moistening. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment while her hand drifted to the pistol holstered at her hip.

"Even… if I threaten to shoot you?"

Sagara said nothing.

The woman wiped small tears from the corners of her eyes with her left hand. Her right hand tightened around the pistol grip.

Sousuke didn't have to look directly at it to see her index finger slide in front of the trigger. The holster had a hole at the bottom which allowed the suppressor to protrude, and this attachment was slowly disappearing as she drew the weapon.

At the moment when her hand and the slide of the pistol were visible but the barrel and suppressor were not, she moved suddenly.

Sagara's eyes widened. He had never seen someone draw a pistol from a holster to a firing position so quickly. There was no conceivable way he could dodge the shot when she fired.

…Only she wasn't aiming at him. Instead she had whirled around when she drew, and pointed the handgun down the range. The action clicked exactly eleven times in rapid succession.

The thumps of the bullets hitting the wall came nearly a third of a second after the action clicks: testament to the fact that the target was a very long distance away.

The woman whirled back around and breathed in through clenched teeth as she glared at Sousuke. She reloaded the weapon, tossing the empty magazine to the floor. She racked the slide of her pistol and holstered it firmly. She walked—nearly stomping—past Sagara, throwing the curtain aside in her fury, and disappeared.

Her footsteps died away along with the tense moment, and ended with the sound of the door closing.

After setting the boxes and flashbang on the ground, Sousuke quietly walked over and picked up the empty magazine from the floor, examining it.

After a few seconds, the boss spoke from his seat. "You're only the second person who hasn't kissed her."

Sousuke looked up briefly. "Who was the first?"

"Your friend, Corbin."

"Was she as angry with him?"

The man stood up and stuffed his thumbs under his belt at either side. "Nope, cause she saw his ring."

"Ah."

"…It's a special fiber designed to stop slashing weapons."

"The armor."

"Yeah. But I think she wears it for the same reason she does everything else she does."

"Some form of control over men?"

"I think it's more of an inferiority complex."

"I can't imagine why." Sousuke pointed at the far target where the bullet holes were all clustered in a very small area near the bull's-eye.

"She doesn't miss…. Anyway she's got a real issue with self-esteem. She's depressed as the dickens unless somebody's gawking at her."

"Depressed as what?"

"The dickens. It's a figure of speech." The man muttered under his breath, "Flippin' foreigners."

"I'm guessing she's part of the upstairs."

"You catch on quick. As expected. After all, you and I both know where we come from."

Sagara couldn't make a whole lot of sense of the statement, but he felt like he'd heard it somewhere before.

There was finally time to look around. The firing range appeared to take up nearly the entire floor. The rest of what Sousuke had seen would seem to imply that the infrastructure of the operation here was fairly well laid out. The firing range was no exception.

"Now that I think about it, you don't look like the kind of guy who uses a revolver."

Sousuke removed his weapon from behind his back while the man continued.

"Neither am I. I'd use a Beretta 9mm over a larger cal revolver any day."

"You aren't like the others, then." Sousuke opened the cylinder and tilted the revolver back quickly. The six golden rounds labeled "38 SPL" fell into his other hand and he set them on the counter of one of the shooting booths.

"Like the others?"

"The man at the pawn shop said that most of the downstairs crew was inexperienced with such weaponry." Sagara bent down and picked up six bullets from the box. They were silver rounds with grey tips. On the back was the label "357 JHP:" Jacketed Hollow Point.

"Oh, Jesse, yeah. He's right, most of the other guys have the 'bigger is better' mentality. The whole misfiring revolver incident kinda shut everybody up about getting a bigger gun, though."

The new bullets had a good feeling to them. 125 grains at 440 meters per second without significant risk of over-penetration. Each cartridge slid smoothly into its chamber and stopped with a satisfying 'tick' when it had been fully inserted.

Sousuke responded, "Smaller ammunition means more rounds per magazine. I would prefer more chances to hit an enemy than the ability to fire through walls."

"Good man. I like the way you think. .45's have their uses though."

**Ker-chick.** Sousuke closed the cylinder. "In situations which call for stopping power, I prefer to use a shotgun."

"Hahah… little tough to carry one around, though."

"I can generally find ways to do so."

"Right. Anyway, your buddy Corbin has two semi-autos, so if you ask him he might give you one of 'em. People like him came with their own gun."

"I'll inquire about that opportunity, thank you."

"Just in case, better practice with that one." The man stepped up next to Sousuke and lowered his voice considerably. "I'm not really supposed to talk about this," he said, "but I have a feeling you'll be one of the guys who saves our butts if it ever happens."

"If what happens?"

"Well, we caught wind that we could meet some resistance here in a few days."

"S.W.A.T.?"

"Worse. Another group that had this place before we did."

Sousuke nearly said "Other terrorists?" before he caught himself. He asked instead, "An opposing group?"

"Yeah, they were pretty small stuff when we took over. A few of the guys that are here now were with them before. But Corbin said we need to be on our guard… says the other group was part of some larger syndicate that doesn't plan to take us lightly."

"I wasn't aware there was such a level of organized crime in the United States."

"We're on thin ice, I'll tell you that right now. That's why the ope—err… I'm definitely not supposed to talk about _that_."

"Understood. On the other hand, as I have had previous correspondence with Louis Corbin, I believe his findings should be taken seriously." Sousuke couldn't ignore the dose of irony in the statement. Corbin had probably already led them to believe that this syndicate existed only so that they would pay less attention to what was going on inside: namely two Mithril operatives.

"You don't have to tell me. He's already tipped us off to two L.A.P.D. investigations in the area. If not for him, we'd probably have been sniffed out by now and have had a serious fire fight."

Sagara was beginning to put the pieces together. In all likelihood, Louis Corbin had gained intelligence from Mithril or from his own sources regarding these investigations and had avoided them. If Mithril, a paramilitary organization, was already in the middle of the situation, then it was a particularly sensitive act of terrorism. Having the police involved would complicate matters tremendously. Corbin—or Mithril itself—was likely avoiding as much conflict as possible by destroying the operation from the inside. Sousuke being summoned to the site was an action he didn't yet comprehend. Extended, private communication with Corbin was now long overdue. Still, if Louis wasn't worried (and he appeared not to be), neither should Sagara be. After all, he was the tool to be used to destroy this operation. How the tool was going to be used was not up to him. Subordination based not on rank but on simple information access level was probably the catalyst for many abrasive relations between the Response and Intelligence divisions of Mithril. As for Sousuke, he had no problem with it.

"Let's see what you can do with that thing, Jozef."

----

"So you had to hold back at the firing range too?" Kaname asked quietly.

Sousuke nodded slightly. "To a certain degree. However, my experience with small arms before entering Mithril was limited. There was also the fact that I was using an unfamiliar weapon."

"Let's not forget," Tessa said from the floor, "that he had practice in hiding his ability."

"Oh yeah," Chidori replied, "I almost forgot about the training camp thing already."

"In the interest of time I will skip over the remainder of my familiarization with the operation via the foreign mercenaries."

"Did you get to talk to Louis?"

"Yes, although it was several days later after I'd done several patrols. In fact, it was on one of these patrols that he met up with me."

----

"Show yourself!" Sagara shouted.

From around the corner of the building came a silhouette with arms raised. "It's me."

"Corbin."

"Yeah, how's the patrol?" Louis spoke quietly.

"If you're asking if I'm alone, then yes, I am. You were the first person to come within twenty-five meters of me in several hours."

"I wasn't asking that. I can tell anyway." He patted a small black box on the front of his jacket near one shoulder.

"I supposed you had such a device." Sousuke lowered his revolver and replaced it behind him.

"Where did you acquire such a supposition?" He articulated carefully the complicated sentence.

"Are you satirizing my English?"

"Just a bit. Don't hear many Americans talking like that."

Sousuke subconsciously looked around him although he knew no one was nearby. They were near the ramp Sagara had originally entered the building through. When he had checked some time ago, Sousuke found that the sniper position was roughly where he'd already assumed it to be. He had been told never to enter that particular building, so he had only used some binoculars one day to determine the most likely window to be used for shooting.

"It comes from primarily military interactions in the language."

"Ah." Louis pointed at Sousuke's waist. "I see they got you a few speed loaders." He was referring to the two devices on his belt which were designed to load all six chambers of the revolver simultaneously. Each had six bullets attached already.

"Yes, but it still does not add up to the capacity of one loaded and one extra magazine on most semi-automatics."

"Don't have to tell me twice."

"I was told you had two semi-automatics."

"You want to use one of them?"

"If that would not be a problem."

"I have both on me, but we'd better not trade now or they might know that we met."

"Hmm. Understood. How were you able to meet me here?"

"I told them I had to follow a lead on another syndicate."

"Does this syndicate actually exist?"

"Yes, but they have no intention of retaking this place. You sound like you know something about it."

"I collected as much information as I could without raising suspicion."

"Too late for that."

Sousuke looked confusedly at Corbin. "I'm not trusted…?"

"Not at all. But it's not your fault. Nobody would be trusted much more after being here only a few days."

"I see. If it is safe, I should continue my routes while we converse."

"Of course."

The two began walking past the ramp which Corbin had just appeared from. Sagara assumed no one would notice them walking together since Louis was saying nothing to the contrary.

"The sniper building." Sousuke stated without looking.

"What about it?"

"What goes on in there? I was told to keep out."

"I had some recon done in the area. The only way in or out seems to be through that overpass." Corbin pointed upward. The parking deck connected to the several-story brick building near the top.

"So that building is also part of the operation?"

"Not exactly. The operation here requires pretty specific conditions which is why we're here in a parking deck instead of a more defendable place."

"What _is _the operation here? It clearly is something very sensitive, since the local authorities were not notified and Mithril didn't order me to simply destroy the place with an Arm Slave."

"I'm glad they didn't send you with one."

Sousuke stopped mid-stride. "Why do you say that?"

Corbin stopped as well. "Why do you ask? _Did_ they send you with one?"

"Yes. A Gernsback."

Louis's expression went wild. "Where the heck is it? How did you get it in here without anyone detecting it?"

"It's stored in the A.S. manufacturing and assembling facility east of here. I was told very little about the operation beforehand, so I simply dropped nearby."

Corbin held his forehead while he looked at the sky. "Wow. You must've caught just the right moment that night."

"What do you mean?"

"Upstairs they've got some equipment to detect Arm Slaves."

"ECCS?"

"No, not that advanced. The system can't tell where exactly the machine is. It can only detect one within about a quarter mile radius, but cloaking has no effect. As a matter of fact, it intensifies the detection ability."

"How did I go unnoticed?"

"There was a brown out the night you were supposed to arrive. We all felt a small quake, but nothing out of the ordinary. If I had to guess, I'd say it wasn't just a coincidence."

"You are suggesting my landing disrupted the power and caused the system to go offline."

"Exactly. No one thought twice about it going off right after the brown out. They just figured it was acting up because of the power failure."

"Quite fortunate for me."

"Actually, the equipment would've been fine had the power blacked out. The only reason it deactivated was because the power wasn't low enough to kick on the generators, but it _was_ low enough to mess up their system."

"It must've taken them some time to bring it back on line. I didn't leave the vicinity all that quickly." Sousuke wondered: If they had some form of detection for Arm Slaves, it would seem logical that they'd have some form of defense against them. But even small tanks were pretty manageable for an M9. What could they possibly have to stop him? In reality it probably didn't matter. The fact was that he could've been detected and completely ruined the operation, but thanks in no small part to sheer luck, this hadn't happened.

"So they really didn't tell you anything?"

"'Very little' is probably an overstatement of the amount of information I received."

Corbin grabbed Sousuke's arm tightly. The two were about to round the corner of the parking deck which would lead to the east side road where Sagara had landed when suddenly,

"Hey, uh… Jozef!" A man's voice came from a very short distance away.

(to be continued…)


	10. Chapter 10: Correspondence

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

_Author's Note: Okay, I accidentally uploaded Chapter 10 of Hito instead of Shougeki. Oops. Thanks for letting me know, Mangadude._

Chapter 10

----

"Oh."

It was Jesse, the man from the pawn shop. He stopped short when he rounded the corner and encountered Sousuke. "I thought I heard you talking to somebody."

Sousuke looked straight at him. "Ah, no, I was simply speaking to myself."

"Something about information?"

"Yes, while I understand the others do not yet trust me, I was somewhat frustrated with how little I know about what operation I'm supposed to be protecting." Sagara decided that speaking the partial truth was the least likely to raise suspicion.

"Oh, yeah, well… we're in the middle of L.A. and all. They can't tell much of anybody anything."

"I understand. For what reason have you come out here?"

"I'm headed home, actually. Usually don't go this way cause I get a gun pointed at me, but I heard you were on patrol tonight so I wanted to see how that revolver was working out for you."

Sagara was beginning to find it irritating how many people seemed to take an interest in his handgun. His irritation was assuaged by the man's amicable demeanor and Sousuke's own disinterest in ultimately killing him.

"I've become familiar with it."

"Good. Well, I'm going back to the wife, see you." He turned to leave.

"Jesse." Sousuke stopped him.

"…Yeah?"

"Have you considered getting out of this line of work? I was told there is another syndicate planning an assault."

"Somebody like you, worried about me? Heh. I already told you didn't I? We can't get out now. We're too scared of you-know-what. The same goes for you, too. I warned you. Anyway we'd better shut up about this."

"Roger. Well, good evening."

Jesse jogged off into the darkness.

After nearly half a minute with Sousuke standing still at the corner, a pair of boots hit the ground behind him.

"That was incredible." Sousuke turned around.

"What?" Corbin asked with a suppressed grin.

"I've not seen anyone move so quickly."

Right after they had heard the footsteps and the voice, Corbin had suddenly leapt and run part way up the wall. In the end he'd gotten high enough to hang by the top of the barrier on the next floor up. Since the ground level was lower than the road, it had been roughly eleven feet in height. He had hung there, still, in the darkness for the past minute.

"I may not look like it, but I'm pretty experienced with covert ops."

"And now you're in the intelligence division."

Louis's tone changed. "After the wife died, I got out of the killing business."

There were several sarcastic ways to respond to this, such as "But here you are again." The way he had started the sentence, though, made such remarks highly uncalled for.

"I… wasn't aware you were married," Sousuke said at last.

"Yeah. Happily. For two years." He sighed at length. "Two years of her telling me every night and day 'I wish you would get out of that business.' Ironic that she's the one who ended up dying, and not me."

Sagara wasn't good with these kinds of situations. Lost war buddies or comrades were one thing. A wife was something he couldn't relate to. He dared to ask in the quiet of the night, "What happened?"

"Cancer. Found out about it only two weeks before she died. Actually I've got a friend named Ethan whose sister has the same cancer. She's been hanging on for years though. Not sure which is worse, to be honest."

"That is very unfortunate."

"Yeah. I've been trying to make ends meet ever since. I don't mean financially, obviously. You and I both know Mithril pays well. I mean emotionally… spiritually."

"Spiritually…," Sousuke repeated thoughtfully.

"She's up in heaven now. Not hurting anymore. I'm down here still."

_Heaven,_ Sousuke thought. _Is there really such a place?_

"Are you a believer…, uhh…?" Corbin's voice trailed off when he realized he didn't know a name to call him by.

"Sagara Sousuke. And no… not really."

"Ouch. Got a girlfriend, Sagara?"

"No."

"Maybe I'm not so bad off." Louis chuckled half-heartedly.

"There's an English saying about that, is there not?" Sousuke asked.

"You mean 'Tis better to have loved and lost love than to never have loved at all.' And I hate that saying. I haven't lost love. I still love her."

"My apologies."

"Don't worry about it. Hey, what's your call sign?"

"Urzu 7."

"Mind if I just call you 'Seven?' Then I won't have to use your fake name."

"I don't mind. Clearly you have no problem with being called Corbin here."

"It's been so long since I've been a 'real person' that my name doesn't have a true meaning anymore."

"Are you speaking metaphorically?"

"I'd have to be, wouldn't I? But yeah, I mean since I've been an official citizen and all that."

"What is your ethnicity?"

"Not sure. I've been using this name for a long time now, but it's made up just like everything else about me. Worst part was when I got married, trying to get all that legal stuff worked around."

"That would be troublesome."

"I can tell you're sick of the small talk, Seven. I don't really blame you. You're probably like I was back then…."

Sagara didn't ask him to complete the thought. "What is the current course of action?"

"'Don't die.'"

"What?"

"That's the plan right now. Don't die. Until I get all the mistrust worked out of the system here, we can't make a move anyway."

"I should lay low, then."

"Very low."

"Do you intend to be promoted to the upstairs before we take action?"

"It was too much to hope for since the beginning. Now it's definitely not going to happen. It's not your fault, though, Seven. If you ask me, Mithril really botched this whole project up. I needed more than one man, and while I'm sure you're good if you're in the SRT, it's pretty obvious you're the new guy."

"I am prepared to perform whatever duties would be required of a higher ranked individual."

"I'm telling you, I don't doubt it. It's not you who's the problem. Anyway, that's my business to deal with. For now I'll be planning a two-man infil."

"If at all possible, I would like some sort of assignment in the meantime. My patrol route and general schedule leaves significant amounts of time unaccounted for."

"Well, I had thought about that, but I don't kn—"

"I am capable."

"Right… sorry. Okay, yeah. That warehouse you parked the M9 in, I need you to investigate it. What I want are delivery schedules, truck routes, et cetera."

"The Mithril Intelligence network does not have such information?"

Corbin sighed briefly, but not in irritation. "That's a fair question to ask. The truth is I've had to cut off my communications since your arrival. We're working alone as of now."

"The distrust is that high?"

"Definitely. If I'm going to earn it back, I've got to stop disappearing all the time."

"Like you are now."

"Exactly."

"Does that mean our time here is at an end?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Understood. Once I procure this information, I will have it on hand for whenever it is convenient for you to meet me."

"Sounds good. I can get your schedule when I need it. We'll probably run into each other a lot anyway, but we have to act somewhat formal, since we were just coworkers in the past and all."

"Roger. I will complete my patrol route and begin the investigation immediately."

"See you around, Seven." Louis turned back the other way to return to the south ramp. "Oh!" He stopped suddenly. "There's a girl in the upstairs, watch out for her."

"I believe I've met her already. She was wearing body armor resistant to slashing weapons."

"That's the one. By 'met her already' I assume you mean in the same way everyone else does."

"At the firing range. There was no physical contact."

Corbin laughed out loud. "Man, I've got to say I respect you for that… but I'm worried about you for that just the same."

"The cosmetics on her mouth were suspicious."

"I'm sure that's why. Hahah. See you." Louis jogged off.

After a few moments, Sousuke asked of himself, "Why would that make him worry?"

----

"What is it?" Sagara gave concerned looks to both Chidori and Tessa, who were laughing and blushing respectively.

"You really don't know why, Sousuke?" Kaname kept laughing.

"Sagara-san!" Tessa looked at him accusingly. "You never told me there was a woman like that there!"

"Like he'd tell you," Kaname said, still chuckling. "He probably didn't even think about it again anyway."

"That is not true," Sagara said, silencing the other two.

"He's right." Mao's voice came from the doorway suddenly. "He told me all about it later." She was standing up groggily.

"Sergeant!" Tessa shouted. "I order you to tell me of any such incidents from now on!" She pouted.

"What?" Sousuke felt cornered. "Well, I suppose I—"

"He doesn't have to do that," Mao said.

"Yes he does! And the same goes with your current mission!"

"I—" Sousuke looked at Kaname worriedly.

"He doesn't have to do that either!" Melissa shouted back at Tessa. "If he and Kaname want to k—"

"Shut up!" Chidori silenced the room. Her face was quite red. "Continue the story, please!"

Nobody said anything.

Melissa broke the silence some time later. "Tessa, did you really get out of these with a paper clip?"

"The **story!**" Kaname pounded her fist on the back of the chair.

----

It was a silent night inside the warehouse. The security guard had come inside for a few moments to rest. He leaned back in the desk chair and stretched his arms. He was a fit man. He had to be. No one with a criminal record or who had failed a strenuous physical examination could get this kind of job. He'd been training for the police force in a more northern part of California when he'd heard about the warehouse security job that paid a little too well. He found out just why it paid so well quickly: if he was found responsible for leaking information about this facility to anyone, he'd be given a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.

When he'd taken the job, this town was in a much better state of affairs. Now things were fast going downhill and his job was becoming more and more dangerous. His superiors had given him several hefty bonuses to keep him around, and it was no wonder. He'd been the guard here for years. Since before the XM9 even existed. Still, crime rates in the area were skyrocketing, and for reasons the newspapers couldn't understand, police activity in the area was not rising to the occasion. This portion of Los Angeles was becoming a thorn in the side of the state government, but for whatever reason they didn't take any action. There were rumors about secret weapons development and experimentation, but none of them ever took hold. Some cover stories included the buildings being used for Special Forces training and other convenient-sounding excuses, but there was no official story. The whole thing was just about to become unavoidable.

Events like a few nights before hadn't made the guard feel any better. The person he thought was just a trespasser turned out to be pretty suspicious. Accounting for missing .45 ammunition had been a real mess. Covering the whole incident after that point wasn't much easier. But late this evening, at the beginning of his shift, a very strange phone call had come in.

Suddenly, a hand appeared and covered his mouth, and then another slid over his shoulder. Before he knew it, the guard had a silver gun barrel pushed under his chin. "Don't move."

The guard froze. He knew the voice. It spoke again.

"I've returned for some information. Will you give it to me?"

The guard nodded slowly. Through the reflection on the glass window in front of him, he watched Sousuke stand up behind the chair slowly. The gun barrel moved to the side of his neck.

"You will cooperate fully, and when I leave this place, you will give no indication to anyone that I was here. I have heard of the punishment that one of your position can receive for doing what you are about to do. I assure you that the punishment for not doing it or for telling anyone that you did is much worse."

Sousuke removed his hand from the man's mouth, keeping the gun pointed at his neck. "Do you recognize me now?"

The guard nodded. "He told me you'd be back…," he said nervously.

"Who? Who told you?" Sousuke pushed the pistol hard.

He coughed several times. "I—I don't know for sure. He told—," the guard swallowed when the barrel's pressure subsided slightly. "He told me a lot of information that nobody should've known unless they worked higher up. He said if I told anyone about you coming that he'd make it look like he got all the information from me."

"All the confidential information?"

"Yes… and he said you'd come for the truck routes and schedules."

_Corbin._ Sousuke thought. _He still doesn't think I can do my job. But even so, this makes things a lot easier._

"If he contacted you in this manner he surely had found a way to avoid any tapping or recording of the conversation. Did he say why you couldn't tell him the information over the phone?" Sousuke asked.

"No, but I couldn't have anyway. The schedules are all done by computer. No one but the programmer knows for sure what the schedule for next week will be, because it's all done in a certain…"

"A certain what?" Sousuke angrily demanded.

The guard answered quickly, and in a panic. "A certain sequence! A sequence! I don't know exactly how it works, I just know that the program decides the schedules."

"So you have a copy of the program."

"No, that's the problem. He hung up before I could tell him, but I can't copy it. It's got all sorts of protection…."

"Give me your gun."

"What?"

"Do it."

The guard held one shaking hand up and carefully removed the handgun from its holster with the other. He handed it to Sousuke who stood behind him.

Sagara took the weapon and removed the magazine. He ejected the bullet from the chamber and set all three pieces aside.

"He's testing me." Sousuke said under his breath.

(to be continued…)


	11. Chapter 11: Copy Protection

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

_Author's Note: Short chapter here, but I plan to post Chapter 12 very soon. 15 chapters total. It's about to come down... For those who don't read my profile, I plan to do an omake for all three of my FMP fanfictions, but as for release times I'm not sure. I know what I'm going to do for Hito and Shougeki, but WFD's omake remains to be formulated. Enjoy!_

Chapter 11

----

"Testing you?" The guard asked quietly.

"Never mind that. Any copy protection can be circumvented. Do you have an internet connection here?" Sousuke pointed to one of the computers in the two corners.

"Well, yeah, but they keep records of everything—"

"Then we wipe the hard drive when we're finished."

"How am I going to expl—"

"That's your job. When does your shift end?"

"5:30, but the others start coming in at 5:00."

"And what time is it now?"

"Midnight. Well, quarter after."

"We have four and a half hours to crack the copy protection on that program. If it's not done by then, I will shoot you on my way out. I suggest we begin immediately."

The guard swallowed heavily.

----

At 3:30am, Sousuke and the security guard were still hammering hacker websites for information on similar types of copy protection. The computer that the guard was using had sweat all over the keyboard. He'd been fairly calm for the first hour and a half, but the two had both realized of their own accord just how difficult a task this would be for such amateurs. Sagara had already considered using the M9's computer to do a brute force method of copying. This would require revealing its existence to the guard, so it was a last resort.

In actuality, the problem couldn't have been solved by this method anyway.

"We're screwed," said the guard. Only he didn't say the word 'screwed.'

"Why?" Sagara demanded.

"This software… it's got every possible copy method covered."

"That can't be done," Sousuke said flatly, "try harder."

"You don't understand, kid," the guard said, exasperated. "I'm not trying to piss you off, but they really did think of everything. They've got the code to where it'll only work with this computer." The computer that he guard was working on was the only one of the two with the software on it. "Something about hardware addresses."

"They can't be changed?"

"Some can, but changing every hardware address to the same one on another computer…? Plus you'd have to have the same type of hardware. Same company and model and all that bull."

"So I'll take the whole machine with me. You can work out the details."

"You _can't._ Even if I could somehow explain a missing computer, the software works off of your IP address."

Sousuke's head dropped back. "So I couldn't use it in another location."

"Yeah, it'll only work here."

"Wait, I read about feigning one's IP address. It's called a proxy. I could use that."

"I don't think so… I think you can only use a proxy server… like, an existing server. I don't think you can fake an IP like this one that's been assigned."

Sousuke dropped his fist down on the counter. "It has to be possible!"

"Kid, I'm sure it is, but with just us? With one more hour? I don't know jack about this stuff! I've learned more in the past three hours than I learned my entire life before this, but that doesn't mean we can do what these guys with PhD's and crap can't do. If you're gonna shoot me, just do it now. I can't take this."

Sagara growled and rubbed his forehead. This wasn't going to work. He stood up abruptly. "I'm going to the other side of the warehouse to think alone. Keep working on it. If I see you try to leave, I will shoot you."

"Geez, whatever, kid." The guard leaned back in his chair with a great sigh. His face was covered with sweat.

Sousuke left through the inside door, taking the both handguns with him. When the door had closed itself, the guard muttered, "Not like I could leave anyway…."

----

It was 4:40am and the guard was beginning to wonder if Sousuke was going to come back.

Suddenly, the door opened.

"Geez, you scared the crap out of me, ki—"

"Sorry, man, came in a little early this morning." It wasn't Sousuke. It was the guard for the first shift.

"Holy… holy…" the night shift guard was still covered with sweat, and was having difficulty speaking.

"What? Whoa, dude, I didn't scare you _that_ bad, did I? Hey, aren't you supposed to be on patrol right now anyway? You'd have seen me come in…." The relief guard was in his early twenties, and was surprisingly lively for this time of day.

"You… you came at a _really_ bad t—wait…." He glanced at the clock. "Wait, no, I'm glad you're here. I think."

The younger guard turned to put his things in a locker against the wall when a shadow appeared outside of the window. The older guard jumped in surprise.

The silhouette was Sagara. He made a zipping motion across his mouth before disappearing once more.

"You sure you're alright, dude? You can go ahead and go, I won't tell anybody." The relief guard had a look of concern on his face when he turned back around.

"What? Oh… yeah, actually… I think I'll stay here till my shift is over…." He laughed nervously.

"Whatever you say, man. I'm going to check outside, so I'll see you tomorrow I guess."

"Yeah, see you…."

The younger guard left via the outside door. After it closed, the sweating guard stood up and looked outside of the window. There was no trace of Sousuke. He sat back down heavily.

"What a night."

----

**Blam!** Sagara's revolver unleashed another round.

"Nice shot, Seven."

"Corbin. You're here," Sousuke stated without turning around.

**Blam!**

"So cold!"

Sagara could feel Louis's grin without looking. "You were testing me. I failed."

"Hahah… Seven…," he walked up close. Quietly he said, "I have 'it' on, so don't worry about anybody overhearing."

"I wasn't worried."

"Oh, right, you have it built in. I forgot. Hahah…."

"Something like that."

"And you didn't fail. Far from it. Well, first of all it wasn't really a test. I really do need the schedule and route."

"But you knew I couldn't get it."

"Relax. I put a tap in there a long time ago. If all else fails I can risk another phone call."

**Blam!**

"So why send me?" Sousuke reloaded.

"Well, if we could get the software we'd have several opportunities for action. With just my involvement I can only glean schedules they talk about over the phone… and only within a few days."

"But if you knew how well protected the software was…"

"I didn't. I figured it had some serious security, but to be honest none of us knows exactly how secret, not secret, or top secret that place is."

"It doesn't seem very open in its dealings."

"True, which is why I sent you. I knew you could make a clean escape even if you couldn't do anything."

"Should I be thanking you?"

**Blam!**

"For giving you an opportunity to check on your Arm Slave? Maybe."

"It has stayed hidden."

"Triggered ECS?"

"Yes. Line-of-sight was only detected a few times in the past several days."

"You found a good hiding place, then."

**Blam!**

"I did accomplish one thing, although I am unsure if it will help."

"What's that?"

"Since it is a warehouse, I was able to tap directly into one of the network cables attached over the M9's head."

"Uh oh."

"I was careful not to have the computer make any connection."

"Whew. Sorry. So what did you do?"

"If communications can be re-established with Mithril at any time, we can activate the connection remotely and use the Mithril network to simulate that of the warehouse."

Corbin whistled quietly. "Sounds like you really did your homework."

"I would appreciate being told in advance of the situation on my next assignment."

**Blam!**

"If you did all that and we can get onto the network, we can put the plan into action very soon."

"How much time do we have?"

"What do you mean? How much time speaking together here?"

"That would be a start."

"I have no idea."

"When is the earliest we could make our move?"

"Tomorrow night."

"And the latest?"

"No idea."

"So the mistrust has been assuaged?"

"Strange thing about that. Something else must've caught their attention, because they're not paying attention to us at all anymore. I'd like to find out the what and the why, but I don't think we have time to wait for another opportunity."

"Agreed."

**Blam! Blam! Blam!**

"Oh yeah, here." Corbin stretched a hand to Sousuke.

"This is?"

"A 9mm. Suppressed."

"Do you need me to neutralize anyone now?"

"Geez, Seven, no! No…," Corbin looked at him sternly. "I just need you to get good with that. Ideally you'll only have to take one shot the whole time. This is a backup."

"What about you?"

"Me?" Louis pulled out his own similar weapon. "Well, that depends on how good of an actor I am."

"I am a combat specialist. I am capa—"

"No no no no no. I trust you there, Seven, don't worry about that. I need you where you are _because _of that. See, if I screw up, there's still a decent chance you can take the shot."

"I am quickly building a distaste for this plan."

Corbin sighed. "I know… I don't like it either, but…"

Sousuke took the weapon and looked at Louis. "But?"

"But there's too many innocent guys here. Especially the downstairs. I just can't bring myself to start a full-fledged assault on this place, even if that's the best option for stopping it all."

"I share your sentiment, but these people…"

"I know, they're participating in terrorist activity."

"And the cost of failure…"

"…is too high to risk it. You're preaching to the choir here, Seven."

"Then why?"

He sighed again. "Listen, I know you're new. I don't want you to think you don't have to respect the authority in Mithril, but…."

Sagara was silent.

"Don't sell 'em your soul, y'know?"

"No, I don't know."

"I mean… at least for me… in a situation like this… even if 'the book' says to do it one way, that doesn't mean I can live with myself after shooting up everybody around here."

"What is your point?"

"My point is… if I can still do the job while killing less people, that's how I want to do it."

"Even if it means endangering yourself."

"Yes."

"…and me."

Corbin looked up at Sousuke honestly. "We're supposed to be the good guys, aren't we?"

"…and endangering the mission?"

"No."

Sousuke waited for him to finish his thought.

"Seven, if I get myself killed because of doing it this way, you can still clean it up easily… by the book."

"There are tactical advantages to having two operatives."

"Most of which involve the planning and logistics parts, which we're going to use. There's also advantages to one-man jobs, you know."

"This is true. But if you were capable of doing this alone, I imagine you would not have called for me."

"…I didn't."

"What?"

"I didn't call for you. They sent you after I gave a report. I didn't want anybody else involved."

Sousuke's eyes narrowed. "So Mithril sent me based on your reports."

"Yeah. They know how I like to do things."

"So they sent me to make sure the job got finished."

"Yup. Even if I kick the bucket."

"I knew something about this operation didn't feel right."

"You're here to either convince me to slaughter them all or to do it yourself when my way screws up."

"I don't suppose I would be able to do the former."

"Not a chance."

Sagara chambered a bullet on the 9mm.

**Click. Tink-tink.** The action clicking and the casing hitting the concrete.

Sousuke missed bulls-eye by about a foot. "Tell me about this operation."

(to be continued…)


	12. Chapter 12: Target Analysis

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

_Author's Note:_

_If you've been wondering why it took so long to post this and read my profile, you discovered that... I have no good reason. But there is good news. I've nearly finished rewriting the last chapter. I know I've lost a lot of my readers by having no release for almost two weeks, but I hope those of you who are still with me will stay with me. Thanks as always for your support as readers. Even if all you've done is raise my hit counter a few times, that's a lot of support right there. Please review!_

_ -Eso _

Chapter 12

----

"Louis sounds like a pretty good guy," Kaname commented. She covered her mouth suddenly when she realized she had interrupted again. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"It is fine," Sousuke responded. "Actually, this sort of thinking is exactly the type of thing which causes more casualties when an operation fails."

"He's right." Mao was standing up now with her thumbs stuck under the waistband of her shorts. Both they and the tank top she was wearing rode a little too low, which was the cause of Tessa's and Chidori's eye twitch whenever they looked her way. Simultaneously they looked to Sagara, but immediately had their fears calmed when they realized—or remembered—that he was paying no attention to such things. Melissa continued. "Hesitating before a kill usually just gets _you_ killed instead, and sometimes your comrades too."

"But how can you go on knowing you might have killed someone innocent?" Kaname asked.

"That is why," Sousuke stated, "not everyone is cut out for such a position."

"Because not everyone can kill without a second thought?" she responded sourly.

"Because," Tessa said, "not everyone can take the path of lesser evil for greater good without faltering."

"It's a difficult thing to live with no matter how good you are," Mao replied. "I think we all wonder what makes us different from the terrorists sometimes. Who's to say we didn't get it wrong once or twice? Tough to sleep at night if you think like that."

"Lives spared versus lives lost." Sagara had been leaning against a wall, but now stood up. "That was Corbin's mentality. At the time it annoyed me because I knew it was not the best way to stop the operation. But…"

"But it's hard to argue with him," Tessa finished. "That personality is why he was a single operative in the Information Division instead of in the SRT."

"I found out quickly that he was one of the best," Sousuke said.

Mao spoke up. "It's true. His training camp statistics were thrown out."

"Thrown out?" Kaname asked.

"Too high. You ever hear of those kids who score the maximum on the IQ tests?"

"Yeah?"

"They can't score them because the test doesn't do their intelligence justice. Same situation here."

"Wow."

"The officers had all heard the story at one time or another… about the one guy who could've been the best of the best."

"But he wouldn't kill people?"

"More like 'But his wife died.'"

"Oh."

"I don't want to get ahead of Sousuke."

"Right, sorry. Go ahead Sousuke…."

Before Sagara began again, Tessa was heard speaking to herself. "The Intelligence Division always hated him for that."

----

"Let me start," said Corbin at the firing range, "by saying this: the boss of this operation is the sickest son of a you-know-what that I've ever come across."

Sousuke had heard such descriptions used before, but Corbin sounded dead serious.

"He's done stuff like this before in other countries. This time it's bigger, and it's in the U.S. Everybody else I've heard talk about it seems to think he's doing it here and now just to show that he can."

"Has Mithril been uninvolved in the other incidents?"

"Necessarily. We can't really do anything about this stuff unless the national government steps aside. The U.S. is pretty headstrong, but when we let them in on how much we knew about this guy, they pulled out and gave us free reign."

"Seems like that may have done more harm than good."

"If you're implying that the lack of police activity around here has raised suspicions, you're partly correct. Suspicions from outside, but not in. Everybody around here is too worried about the operation itself to wonder why nobody's snooping around. At least I thought they were, until you showed up. Now it's smoothed out again."

"So this man… do we have his name?"

"He doesn't ever use the same one. The only way we or anyone else knows what he's doing is that he slits his own guys' throats."

"I had nearly assumed that was a figure of speech."

"Hardly. He really does it. And he really enjoys it. You hear about all the sick serial killers and whatever out there… this guy is worse. All the serial killers are so insane they get themselves caught. This guy is like a freaking light bulb. Half the time he's a psycho, the rest of the time he's as calm as you can get and seems to know everything that's going to happen before it happens."

"If this person is such a large threat, why is there not more motivation to have him killed?"

"Oh, the motivation is there, but he never stays in one place. He does his thing in a country for a week or two, and then ships out. By the time that nation is about to mobilize, he's gone and they're just glad to be rid of him. Besides that, up until now he's been a pretty small fry."

"It seems I can't get a straight answer on what is being accomplished here."

"That's partly because we don't know. The operation itself isn't highly logistical. In other words, he's not building nukes or something. Anything like that would be much easier to track down and stop without ever having to go inside. This guy is different."

"So what _does_ he do?"

"To put it simply, everywhere he's been, there's been a ridiculous amount of crime and terrorism there a month later. It's like he plants crime zones. All those really hot spots in the Middle East that you've been hearing about the past couple of years? In 9 out of 10 of them, he was there before it all started."

"So he makes money by starting terrorist groups and crime bosses off on the right foot."

"Well, the wrong foot… but yeah. Just imagine how much money he'd rake in like this. Even if the operations he plants ever get stopped, there's no way to trace money that's already dirty. He probably doesn't get paid unless the whole thing takes root."

"But there's no money to be made in most acts of terrorism."

"Exactly, but when there's terrorist activity in an area, there's high crime there too. It's the same as when a natural disaster strikes and suddenly everyone goes looting."

"Hmm."

"We didn't have enough evidence to nail this guy until now. Actually, we still don't have enough evidence to convict him of any of this. The long story short—and this is top secret of course—is that the U.S. government as well as the rest of the United Nations wants him dead, and they're willing to cover it up if we can do it."

"So our operation here must be the way it is."

"Yeah, it's gotta be small and it's gotta be tactical. We take him out, everybody involved that isn't dead goes home and hopes they don't get arrested later."

"So the people involved in this will not be tried as criminals?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the cover story by the government. They just want the big guy dead, because as far as anybody can tell, it's a solo operation. He just picks up people along the way."

"And then kills them before he leaves."

"I imagine the upstairs crew are all people who intend to use the infrastructure he builds. The fact is… I'm not going to bat an eye for taking one of those guys out. But as many people as they found dead in the other countries after he left… I'd say if the boss gets away with it, the entire downstairs crew won't be left alive. Anyway, if he's dead, chances are the rest of the big guys up there are going to stop whatever they had in mind. They all look up to him, so if he goes down they're not going to risk anything."

"Why does he have to be on location to accomplish this?"

"Information networks are a lot tighter here in the U.S. than they are everywhere else. Plus, the other places he's set things up don't have that much of a network to begin with."

"So there's no risk of him hitting most European nations."

"We figure this is a stepping stone. If he can get in and out of the U.S., he can probably do it in Europe, too."

**Click-click-click. Tink, ti-tink-tink tink.** Corbin fired several shots. His accuracy was superb.

"I don't have extra ammunition for this weapon," Sousuke commented.

Corbin silently pointed to the far side of the firing range where an open case of ammunition lay. Suddenly he looked up with wide eyes.

Sousuke gave him a confused response, but could also detect something was wrong. Corbin motioned for Sagara to stop all speaking and pointed him towards the far side of the curtain. Sousuke ran there as quickly and as quietly as he could and hid.

The woman in body armor appeared moments later from the curtain leading to the stairs. She walked directly over to Corbin.

"Louie! You're here again…," she sounded ecstatic, as was typical of her entire demeanor.

"Ack, can you not talk like that? You know I'm not inter—"

"I know." She pouted visibly. "Even though…," she breathed in through her teeth, "it has to have been a _long _time since you—"

"Please!"

"Ahahah… sorry, baby." Her grin turned into a frown. "No, I'm really sorry… really. I won't talk about that anymore. Did you beat me yet?"

"I haven't had a timer."

"I'll time you."

"Actually now isn't a very good time…."

"Why? What's going on…?" The woman started looking around.

"**Ahh!**" Corbin shouted. He squeezed his hand tightly.

"Oh no, Louie! You cut yourself! How did you do that?"

"Must've… must've been on the slide. Ack, please don't—you know."

"Sorry…." She sounded very sorrowful.

"I'm alright…."

"I wish we hadn't met here like this… you're the best guy I've ever met."

"You really have a one-track mind."

"Heheh…"

"And you might find something to like in other guys if you weren't so busy turning them into puddles of lust."

"But I—"

"You know you're attractive. People like that won't prove it."

There was a pause.

"…Why won't you say it…?"

"I can't. You know why."

"But… she's gone. Are you never going to say it to anyone again?"

"Ever since that day she's all I've had eyes for. I can't say it to anyone else. Someone will. You'll find him."

"No one has ever said it."

"Not ever?"

"Never."

Another long pause.

"Is that what you're really after?"

Corbin looked up at the woman. Her demeanor was totally different from what Sousuke remembered of her previously. It appeared that she and Louis were firm acquaintances. It occurred to him that Corbin had probably been getting his information from her.

"…M—maybe…"

"You shouldn't be sleeping with guys like you do, either. You're worth more than that."

"No one else says that…."

"But they know it. They're just too caught up. And you shouldn't be doing this kind of stuff either." Corbin waved his gun slowly, referring to the mercenary job.

"But it's what I'm good at… and what about you?"

"Yeah, well…"

She giggled very youthfully. (Sousuke found the whole person very disturbing.) "You act all good around me, Louie, but you're just as bad, I think. You're the one who should get out of this stuff…"

"Maybe I will…. You going to time me?"

"'kay." She took Corbin's watch from him. "Ready?"

Louis put the silenced weapon in its holster and placed both his hands flat on the counter which was used for loading magazines on the range. "Ready."

"Three… two… one… go!"

Corbin's hand flew to the holster. He drew the weapon, fired off the entire magazine minus a single chambered bullet, reloaded, fired off the second magazine, and holstered the weapon.

"11.34 seconds, Louie. Pretty good…"

"But still a long way to go."

"Only one more second. Anyway I have to go. I just wanted to see if you were here. Thanks for being so sweet." She walked over to him and handed him the watch. "I hope your wife will forgive me for this."

"For wh—"

She quickly kissed him on the cheek and looked at him. "You're blushing! Aww…."

"Yeah," Corbin said, clearly a bit annoyed. "Great."

"Thanks! Sorry! Bye!" The woman jogged out of the room.

After some time had passed, Sousuke stood up and came through the curtain. "That woman is—"

"Don't say it."

"What?"

"'Stunning,' 'hot,' 'gorgeous,' whatever."

"I was going to say 'disconcerting.'"

"Oh."

"What is it that she wanted you to say?"

"She wanted me… or someone else… to say 'You're beautiful.'"

"It would appear she could have any number of men say that to her if she asked."

"She wouldn't ask directly like she did to me."

"I see."

"That's a very important phrase to a girl, Seven. Don't ever forget to say it when you meet her."

"I already met her a few days ago."

"Not _her_, you dimwit."

"What is a dimwit?"

Corbin smacked his forehead. "Flipping foreigners. Never mind."

Sousuke blinked in bewilderment a few times. "…Can we return to the previous discussion?"

(to be continued…)


	13. Chapter 13: Upward Assault

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Chapter 13

----

"You want to hurry it up a little, Sousuke?" Mao groaned. "I've only been listening for the past half an hour and it's already getting long."

"He sure is spending a lot of time on that girl," Tessa said, pouting.

Sousuke raised a hand in defense. "Her part in the story is integral to Corbin's character and ult—"

"You don't have to explain yourself, Sousuke." Mao grinned.

"No, I—"

"I think he's doing a good job of telling the story," Kaname said sternly. "Maybe if everyone wasn't interrupting him so much…."

All three turned to Chidori in surprise at her uncharacteristically defending Sagara.

At some level it might've occurred to one or more of them that Kaname was upset at having the story shared now with three people when it had started as a quiet discussion. This fact would never see the light of day, however.

Sousuke started speaking again. "Well, in short, Corbin and I reviewed his plan for halting the operation shortly thereafter and I was informed that we would be proceeding with the mission in only two days from that point. In the end, we—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Kaname held up her hands to stop Sagara. "You can't just build it all up like that and then say 'We succeeded' or 'We failed.' If these two don't want to hear the rest they can go back to bed."

She was clearly upset.

"…My apologies," said Sousuke. "I will continue from the day of execution."

"Thanks." Kaname threw a mean stare at the baffled Tessa and Melissa before turning her attention back to the story being told.

----

"Who—!?"

"Shh… it's me, Ami." Corbin had snuck up behind her and caught her, covering her mouth and restraining her by the waist. They were on the wire maze floor.

He let his fingers slip off of her mouth slowly. "Louie? How did you get beh—ohhh…." Her surprised tone returned to her characteristic one. "Louie, you shouldn't… when you're close to me like that I—"

Corbin whispered quickly. "Geez, Ami! It's not like that, now stay quiet! I'm going to let you go."

"If I say I won't keep quiet will you stay pressed against me?"

"No!" he answered sharply.

"Oh," she sounded very disappointed. "I guess I'll stay quiet then."

"There's no time for your games, Ami, I need you to listen carefully."

Her tone turned to one of concern. "It _does_ sound important, Louie… what's wrong? Are you sure no one is around?"

"I'm sure. And it is very important. I need you to step closer just in case, but for Pete's sake don't make this any harder for me than it already is."

Ami nodded once and stepped within a foot of Louis.

"Here's the deal. I'm a spy."

"What?"

"Shh! I said I'm a spy. I'm from an organization that stops things like this from happening."

"I _knew_ you weren't the kind of guy to work here!"

"Keep it _down_, Ami! I thought you were experienced with these things."

"Sorry… I am, but lately I haven't been myself…."

"I guess that's a relief. So then you know what I'm going to say next."

"About the boss?"

"Yeah. He knows you're too close to me."

"You think he's going to kill me?"

"I think it's a big enough risk that you should listen to me instead of staying loyal to him."

"I'd do that anyway, Louie…."

"I'm sorry if I'm putting you in danger."

"It's okay…."

"I need you to help me shut this down."

"…You want me to get you upstairs?"

"Yes. You probably know I want to kill as few people as possible. I have this." Corbin pulled something out of his pocket.

"How many times will that work?"

"Three times for sure. After that it depends on how big the guy is."

"Well I can't just walk up there with you."

"I know, I know… I need you to…." Corbin let out a defeated sigh. "I can't believe I'm about to ask you to do this."

A grin appeared on Ami's face. "You're gonna act all cool and say 'I need you to work your magic just _one more time_, Ami'"

"…Something like that."

"Okay, I'll do it, but don't get mad when it works."

"Wait, I don't want you to actually—"

"I know… just long enough for you to get behind them and shock them, right?"

"Yeah… although I'm not sure which is more electrifying."

"Heheh… there you go with your puns, Louie. Promise me one thing, though."

"What's that?"

"When it's all over, if we both get out alive…"

"We will."

"…And when you realize that your wife wants you to move on…"

"…oh gosh…"

"…look me up, okay?"

"…"

"Okay?!"

"Shh! Yes! Fine! Just be quiet, geez!"

Ami suddenly grabbed Corbin and embraced him. "Don't die, Louie. Let's go…." She put on the infrared goggles and led him by the hand through the invisible maze.

"There's one other thing, Ami…," Louis whispered.

"Is it about the guy behind us?"

Corbin stopped moving momentarily. "You knew?"

"He's good… but not that good."

"Well, he's with me. We need to leave the path clear for him."

"Sure. Why isn't he right with us?"

"In case anyone sees us…. Also, I have to tell you something else…."

----

"Miss Nivins!" It was the voice of a guard. He was behind a triple-plated Lexan window which had a speaker-microphone installed in it. To one side was a thick steel door built into a larger wall which separated the main third floor from the stairwell they had just come up.

"Eddie!" she cooed. "I told you to call me Ami, baby…."

"Heheh… o—okay…. You're late."

Ami walked up the final half flight of stairs. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that, it was getting really hot in that maze down there so I had to—oop!" She tripped suddenly on the final step and stumbled directly into the window. Her chest and upper body pushed against the Lexan.

Meanwhile, Corbin slid up the stairs and to the other side of the steel door unnoticed.

Ami's breath left condensation on the plastic. Her breathing was clearly labored. She smiled through her small gasps at the man behind the window.

"Actually…," she said, "it wasn't because of the maze that I got like this…." She looked down at her body armor top, which showed signs of sweat.

The man behind the Lexan swallowed silently while Ami looked into the retinal scanner. A mechanism clicked when the reader confirmed her eye signature. The guard reached down to press the final release which would open the door only after the scanner had registered.

"It's because I… I…" Ami closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose. Her chest puffed out even further than usual. "Oh, God, Eddie, I'm… please…."

The door clicked loudly, then slid open. The guard jumped in surprise when he realized he had pushed the button without meaning to.

Ami responded with an ecstatic moan. "Ahhn! Eddie, come to me, please! Don't make me…!" Her hand slid down her chest and stomach towards her waist….

"Y—yes ma'am!" The guard set something which appeared to be a paperweight on the button and dashed out of the small room behind the wall. Ami took the few steps to the door before he appeared.

When he came into view, her tone changed from arousal to that of a cocky victor. "Sorry, baby."

"Ugh!" The guard fell to the floor. The crackling of the taser could be heard as Corbin stood up.

"I'm not sure which I'd rather do," he said quietly. "Watch you do that again… or just kill the next guy. Both are pretty crappy options right now."

Ami laughed silently as she helped Corbin drag the unconscious body back into the room.

"How long will that door stay open?" he asked.

"About 30 seconds."

"Good."

"An alarm will go off after that."

"Seven will handle it. Let's move on. Lead the way."

Ami and Louis disappeared into the third level.

Like clockwork, Sousuke silently made his way up the stairs a few seconds later. He pressed his back to one side of the door and looked through. Once confirming that his path was clear, he moved into the guard room and removed the weight from the button. Sousuke was setting the weight aside when he felt something…: a pin.

The thing that looked like a normal paperweight was actually a 'beestinger.' This was a type of grenade that used small rubber balls to incapacitate anyone near the explosion. Unlike a flashbang, a beestinger did not require the enemy to be looking at it to be fully immobilized. It also prevented an experienced soldier from simply plugging his ears while looking away in order to avoid a flashbang's effects. Sagara wasn't going to be picky as to the unusually small size of the grenade. He placed it on his belt with the other stun grenade. He then bent down to check the guard's weapon. It was a .45 semi-automatic. Taking a third pistol at this point would just slow him down. The extra ammunition was also pointless. Sagara opted for his silenced 9mm that he'd obtained from Corbin, and kept the .357 magnum revolver that he'd become fairly proficient with, rather than swapping one of them for the .45.

Suddenly, Ami's scream was heard from several dozen yards away inside the third floor.

"Louie, no!"

Soft thumps of bullets hitting flesh were distinct to Sagara. He checked his watch. 45 more seconds until he was scheduled to come out. The layout of these floors was unfamiliar even to Corbin. They were operating on a time schedule that required certain assumptions regarding enemy resistance and actual mobility.

30 seconds. Sousuke drew the silenced pistol and slowly looked outside the small room: no one in sight.

He could hear his own breathing. Crawling under the wire maze was extremely exhausting. The fact was that he had started going under it before Louis finished talking to Ami. Sagara had been invisible to both of them during this time, but halfway through the maze, when they had passed within a few feet of them, he had already sweated hugely and could now be detected by the heightened mercenary instinct.

He had carried with him thick rubber gloves and two wires. These wires had small, toothed clamps on either side of them which earned them the nickname "alligator clips." The purpose of these wires was to disrupt the circuit as Sousuke went under it. The resistors were placed in a consistent pattern, but the wires connecting them were not. Sousuke used this fact (and the incredible heat from the resistors) to guess-and-check every combination of two parts of the circuit until he connected them. With just two wires he had essentially removed the resistors from the circuit before his hips and torso—the thickest parts of his body—came in contact with them. Having been designed specifically to dissipate heat, the resistors cooled relatively quickly, so once the circuit was rerouted and current had begun taking the new path of least resistance, the elements Sagara touched were at a bearable temperature in just a few seconds. In total, it had taken him about fifteen minutes to make his way under the maze, and he had sustained only minor burns in the process. As Corbin had warned, it was a very difficult part of the plan.

The reason for taking such drastic measures was simple, and Sousuke understood its importance…, but that did not change his distaste for the whole maneuver. While watching the last five seconds tick away on his watch, Sagara decided that he would never become an electrician.

He dashed out into the third level, gun in hand. When he rounded the next curtain corner, he found Ami's body covered in blood stains and a dark puddle coming from beneath her body armor. Sousuke stepped over her slowly. Next to her were more bodies: one guard appeared to have been electrocuted upon rounding this same corner from the other direction. Two more had been shot from near point blank and had taken a curtain down with them as they fell to the ground. Behind the curtain that had fallen were several computers and papers. It was Sousuke's job to destroy as much of these as possible before moving on, and to defeat any remaining enemy forces or reinforcements should they show themselves.

Sagara found a toppled metal chair. He pried off one of the hollow but sturdy steel legs with considerable effort. Hefting the chair leg in the hand that did not hold his pistol, Sousuke was satisfied with its ability to destroy.

_Corbin_, he thought, _I hope you were right_.

Sagara began bashing computer monitors for several seconds before realizing how pointless such action was. After mentally reprimanding himself, he began tearing open cases, ripping out hard disks, and throwing them as hard as he could to the floor. Most of them came apart with a single blow.

Sousuke was aware of the ridiculous level of noise he was making. That's why he had to trust in Corbin's words. Sagara had been told by Louis that no one but guards—the now dead ones—were on the third floor at this time of night. Louis had obtained such information from Ami, which was clearly his primary source. Sagara couldn't help being suspicious of the woman. If she was so strange in her outward actions, there was no reason for her to be trusted with such a liaison. Still, Corbin was the information agent, and Sousuke would have to be satisfied with his trust in her. Looking at Ami's body in the curtained hallway, Sagara realized that any damage she might have done was unavoidable at this point anyway. With that, he finished destroying hard disks and began shredding the few paper documents that were lying about.

Sousuke was surprised at how quickly he had finished a large level of destruction on the third floor. In fact, most of the floor seemed unused. He could've expected as much, as such an operation probably required less space than it did a suitable location. When he looked at his watch again, however, he realized that he had spent more time destroying things than he'd thought. There was only one minute before he was to be at the stairwell to the next floor providing possible cover fire for Corbin.

The soft body armor he was wearing was starting to feel very hot by the time Sagara made it up to the fourth floor. When he opened the stairwell door he found more evidence of fighting. He was not, however, to follow Corbin's path this time. Instead he would take a different route. As the fourth floor was largely an empty one, it was also one of the most dangerous. The stairwell Sousuke had just taken was one that, aside from the flight from the third to the fourth level, was destroyed. He could've jumped down to the second level if he'd really wanted to, but he knew he'd have found a door welded shut there anyway. Besides that, he didn't want to go down. He wanted to go up. They were headed to the fifth floor, ultimately. Corbin would be taking the ramp—the only remaining way from the fourth to the fifth floor—and essentially laying siege. In the meantime, Sagara would cross over to the adjacent building and prepare to take the "real" shot. It was about as close to a suicide mission for Corbin as you could get. The odds of him even getting to the point of drawing the boss of the operation out so that Sousuke could kill him were very slim. If Louis failed, however, there was plenty of time for Sagara to obtain a full arsenal and either raid the fifth floor himself or destroy it entirely and force any survivors to the roof. There on the top level it would not be difficult to find and snipe the head of the operation, then call in the authorities to pick up the pieces.

Sagara hoped they would not have to do this. Ideally he would simply take the shot and Corbin would surrender as soon as the boss was killed. Idealism, however, was not an admirable trait to Sousuke. And idealism to the point of assuming one could walk up to the fifth level where specially trained, heavily armed forces as well as potential crime bosses and terrorist leaders and one of the worlds most feared killers resided, only to kill one of them and walk away unscathed…, well…, that sort of idealism was simply absurd. Sagara had to accept the fact that he, in all likelihood, would be finishing this job alone.

Hearing the shouts of guards nearby, Sousuke quickly began his route along one side of the floor. In short order he found himself near the ramp which originally led to the third floor, but was now blocked off. There was a separator wall between the lane for upward traffic and downward traffic. On this side of the wall would be their meeting place. Once Corbin had defeated anyone within the curtained area, he would appear here and both operatives would continue once confirming each others' results. Sagara checked his watch and moved to the separating wall.

He had already broken a sweat. The Kevlar jacket Sousuke was wearing had only increased the discomfort. As a result of this, he couldn't stop breathing hard. He knew he had to stay quiet, but no matter how many times he swallowed, he was still audible.

This could prove to be either a help or his demise. If Corbin was indeed on the other side of the wall, he'd know that it was him—that it was Sousuke. But if the events of the last few days had meant anything, Corbin might not expect him to be breathing so hard this early.

Still, this was the right place, and—Sagara checked his watch yet again—the right time. In their rush to make this plan, neither had discussed a way of identifying themselves to the other. Sousuke could only think of one solution.

**Scrape, scrape, tap-tap-tap.** He dragged the tip of the suppressor against the concrete twice, and then tapped it three times. The metal-on-concrete sounds echoed off of the walls.

It was Morse Code for the number "7."

This was it. If it was Corbin, he'd show himself now. If it was an enemy, it'd be whoever had the fastest trigger finger that came out alive.

(to be continued…)


	14. Chapter 14: Captured

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

**Author's Note: Hard to believe that this is the second-to-last chapter...**

Chapter 14

----

_Ugh… my head…._ Sousuke's mind was spinning even with his eyes closed. He feared he'd throw up if he opened them.

…_Wh—what happened?_

There were voices coming from somewhere nearby.

"I'd be insulted, but he did get this far."

A radio crackled to life… something Sousuke couldn't understand came through. Another voice responded to the first.

"The sniper says he has the shot."

"Do you know how many times I've seen someone die to a rifle bullet?"

"So should I tell him not to take it?"

"Of course not. I've heard some things about this Corbin fellow… we'll toy with him some more."

"Yes sir." The man apparently began speaking into the radio. "Negative. Do not fire."

"Did you get the woman?"

"They found her dead on the third floor, sir."

"…You idiot."

"Wh—?"

"She's not dead. Of course he'd pretend to kill her to protect her."

"…I… see."

"Bring her up here. I need her."

"Yes sir." He clicked the radio again. "Any available guard, respond."

"Do it yourself."

"What?"

"You heard me. Bring her up here yourself."

"Sir… are you sure you—?"

"**Don't** test my patience."

"Y—yes sir."

Sousuke heard footsteps die away slowly.

"You awake yet?"

Silence.

"I'm talking to you, mercenary."

Sousuke coughed once and rolled onto his side. _I can't move._

"That tranquilizer was supposed to put you down for a lot longer. When they told me you might wake up soon, I figured I'd pay you a visit."

_It's the boss… did Corbin fail? How long have I been unconscious?_

"I love watching your facial expressions. You're mentally and physically incapable of doing anything productive, but you're still concentrating on your mission, aren't you?"

_Why do these people… always love to talk so much? …Where are my weapons?_ _I can't concentrate._

"I hate people. Did you know that? I hate them. The only people I like are the ones who hate me."

"Wh—" Sousuke's word stopped short with a loud cough. "Where are… my weapons?"

"You really are delirious, aren't you? You're still wearing them."

_What…?_

"I'd be surprised if you could pull the trigger on either of those pistols, but you're welcome to try."

_I'm… still armed?_ Sousuke slowly willed his hand to move to his hip. His fingers fell on top of the revolver's grip. With considerable effort he brought the weapon up to his head and vaguely pointed it towards the voice coming from behind him.

"No, no… a little to the right."

_This kind… of person… is so confident…_, Sousuke thought, _that he's probably telling me the truth._

Sousuke moved the weapon slightly. **Blam!**

"Ahahah… I forgot you were lying with your face up. I was telling you to move to the right but it's your left from where you are now. Hahahah!"

**Blam!**

"Whoa. That one was close."

**Blam! Blam!**

"Two shots left, c'mon."

_There he is. I'll hit him this time._ Sousuke's mind was starting to show some signs of clarity. He pulled the trigger.

…But it was too late. The man had already kicked the revolver away. Sousuke heard it slide, but not on concrete. It was an inconsistent sliding that sounded like tiled floor.

_Where am I?_ Sousuke started to open his eyes. Slits of light invaded, blinding him. When the washed out image started to focus, he saw a man grinning. It was a disturbing face. A disgusting image. It was—

Sousuke turned quickly when food and stomach acids flooded his mouth. Vomit splattered on the floor.

"Nausea…," the man said thoughtfully. "I've never felt that before. I once killed a young boy really slowly to try to feel it… but I couldn't. I was surprised by how much blood there was, though."

Sousuke pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. His own regurgitation smelled terrible.

"Wait, why am I telling you this? You've probably killed almost as many people as I have. I'd better save the good stuff for your friend."

_Corbin's alive… do they have him?_ "Where… is he?"

"Still looking for me. He's pinned down with some guards. I've got about eight of them over there."

"…Over there?" Sousuke tried opening his eyes again. The intense nausea came back momentarily, and he gagged slightly.

"Take a look around, Mr. Hero."

Sousuke glanced towards the man, who was standing with his arms crossed. He was wearing pure white clothes. _How inconspicuous… this guy really is overconfident._ Sousuke sat back on his ankles and looked in the other direction.

_…No…_ "…We're…"

"Across the street. He's not even looking for me in the right building! Hahahah!"

"Why… haven't you killed us yet?"

"Oh, come on. You've heard the stories. I _like_ killing people, but it has to be interesting. Honestly, I was hoping for a big battle, but two guys like you are probably just as good."

_Almost there…_

"Once I get the girl up here we'll bring your friend over."

_No… don't stop talking…_ "Why… do you want her?"

"You'll just have to wait and see! Even a killer like you would have a hard time watching this. I can't wait to see Corbin's expression."

_Perfect… keep talking._ Sousuke looked slowly back at the man. He was looking at the ceiling, grinning.

"Just imagine what he'll look like when I tell him what I'm going to do…. I'll make sure he watches the whole—"

**Click click click! Click!**

"You missed, hero!" The man's foot came sailing into Sousuke's outstretched arm. The 9mm pistol flew several yards before hitting some sort of barrier and clattering to the floor.

Sousuke fell to the ground, clutching his hand. "…You should've removed my weapons."

"Why? You can't hit anything like that. It's hilarious to watch you try."

_It's true,_ thought Sagara, _those were moves of desperation. Now I'm unarmed and I never even hit him._

"I'd really like to slash you up a bit as payment for that little stunt, but I need you conscious for this next part. After I put on my show for Corbin and my show for you, you're going to tell me all about who hired you."

"…Never."

"Yeah, yeah, that's what they all say. But trust me. You don't even have to be half way human to break down."

Sousuke had seen some gruesome things before, but the way this person was talking…. "You don't… seem so bad."

"Hahah… you're trying to make me angry."

_You say you only like people who hate you…but you kill them anyway._

"Well, there's no sense in me getting worked up. I'll prove it to you soon enough."

----

_They're not shooting to kill me_.

Corbin had plenty of time to think, laying down on the ramp. He had long ago spent all of the ammunition on the assault rifle, but until recently he had assumed that the guards did not know this. Now… watching their movements and their reaction times to his occasional shots… he was sure that they were only trying to hold him still.

There were three possibilities for why they would not be trying to kill him now.

The first possibility was simple: They needed time. But even if this was the case, they could easily overpower him now and stop the threat altogether.

The second possibility was that they were—or considered themselves to be—outmatched. They could be taking a defensive position for the simple fear of being defeated. Again, this possibility was lacking—surely they could have brought reinforcements from above or below after this much time if they needed them.

The third possibility was that they were occupied with something else. Something else such as Sagara. If Sousuke had failed, Corbin might have been the bigger threat, and so they were stalling him.

Where was the head of this operation? He could've escaped by now, but Corbin would've been alerted by one of the many sensors attached to the trucks he'd sabotaged before. Those trucks also served another purpose: They would be late within a half hour from now. Government agents would be swarming the area shortly after that, giving Corbin and Sousuke all the confusion they'd need to overpower the remaining numbers should resistance continue after the boss was killed.

Louis had to focus on his objective: Get the head of this operation out in the open so that Sagara could take the shot.

…What if Sousuke had been captured? Well, then the operation was a failure and they'd have already killed Louis.

…What if Sousuke had already taken the shot? Then resistance would've stopped or chaos would've ensued.

…What if the boss wasn't here?

Corbin hadn't thought of this possibility before. Now that he considered it, he realized how foolish he had been. Ami's information only went so far. She couldn't get that close to the boss because she was afraid of him. So all he ever knew about the whereabouts of the target was through semi-solid information.

…Was Ami alright?

Louis shook his head. He didn't have time to worry about that right now. She was a mercenary, too. She could take care of herself if she were discovered alive… right?

Corbin watched the line of concrete at the top of the ramp closely. No one had moved for some time. He'd taken a shot at one guard several minutes ago who came to check that Corbin was still here waiting. His head had appeared and a bulletproof shield had protected the guard from the otherwise lethal shot Corbin had immediately taken.

Laying prone on the ramp, Louis was beginning to feel exhausted.

_Why don't they just hurry it up? All they have to do is rush me with shields raised and I'm done for._

Something triggered in Corbin's brain. _They want to capture me_.

They would wait for an opportunity, and then take him alive. After that would come the torture for information. Or, in the case of this particular target, the torture for the sake of pleasure.

Louis had already resigned to his fate when making this plan. He would not, however, succumb to torture or spend his last moments at the hands of an international terrorism facilitator. It was time to do something serious.

A few seconds later, Louis had made up his mind.

"**Uurrrraaaaaaagh!**" He screamed as loud as he could.

**_Ting!_** He pulled the pin on the flashbang.

"**I'll kill you all!**" he yelled.

When he was certain that all the guards would be looking his way, and when he'd finished counting down to one, he tossed the grenade and plugged his ears.

It was less than a second later that he felt the impact of the sound.

There was no time to waste.

Corbin took off up the ramp and dashed past the debilitated guards. One of them was oriented enough to start shooting.

As Louis sprinted across the mostly empty parking deck floor, bullets hit the ceiling in front of him and blinded him with dust.

_It stings!_ The bits of concrete and debris had gotten into his eyes. He blinked furiously but it only made it worse.

Still sprinting, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Though very blurry, when he looked down he could see by his hands that his eyes were bleeding.

The furious pain under his eyelids made every other sense dull. Before long Corbin wasn't even running in a straight line anymore. The rhythm of his footsteps fell into syncopation. Before long, Louis tripped and fell. When his head hit the concrete, he immediately went unconscious.

----

Some indefinite period passed.

'_Louie…'_

_What? Ami?_

'_Louie… I'm scared…'_

_Scared of what? What's happening?_

'_Wake up, Louie… help me…'_

_Help you?_

'_I lied, Louie, I never did this before like you did…'_

_You…?_

'_Please wake up… I don't know how but… please help…'_

"Louie…"

"A—Ami…?"

"Lou—Agh!" Ami let out a cry of pain as she crumpled to the floor.

"Whoops. Hey, Corbin, you'd better wake up before I beat this girl to death. Well, actually, it might be better for you if I do."

Louis opened his eyes. "You…!"

"Me! Yes! Ahahah… I love that. You guys should've known by now that you're not the first couple of assassins they sent for me. Probably a different organization this time, though, cause if it was the same one they'd probably have learned by now."

"…Learned…?" Louis managed.

"Look around you, Corbin. Get a good handle on the situation."

Corbin opened his eyes. There was a large line of windows in front of him. On the other side was the building he'd just come from.

_They were here all along? Why didn't they just kill me with the sniper?_

Below one of the windows was Sousuke, apparently unconscious, lying next to a pool of vomit.

There were two armed guards to his left and right with automatic rifles. And in front of him and to one side was the head of the operation. In the flesh. At his feet was Ami, wrapped in a white bedsheet, and apparently wearing nothing else. She no longer had any blood on her.

"…Ami…"

"She cried out for you while they stripped her and washed off all your fake blood."

"You son of a b—"

"Whoa, there! I thought you were a religious man! Besides, it's way too early to be cursing at me. I haven't even done anything to her yet. But as you can probably guess, she's where the fun is going to start."

Ami's voice shook as she whimpered. "I'm sorry, Louie… I'm so sorry… I…"

Corbin swallowed hard. "It'll… be okay…"

"Hahahahah!" The target laughed maniacally. "Oh, **man** I love that line. As though you even have a plan anymore!"

Something made a noise from the window. Louis glanced over. Sousuke was looking him straight in the eye with a very serious expression. He looked at the back of the target's head and pointed to his own eyes.

_Watch him?_ Louis thought. _What does he want me to see?_

"**Corbin!** I'm talking about raping your slut here and you're looking at your stupid partner! Who are you more worried about?"

The words struck fear into Corbin's heart. This man was not kidding around. "You… wouldn't…"

Louis watched his eyes dilate and his anger turn to a grin. "Yeah, I'm going to do it in front of you. And if you close your eyes…" A knife flipped open in the man's hand. "I'll cut her."

Corbin looked over at Sousuke worriedly. There was no one near him. Couldn't he do something? No, he was unconscious again. He was lying in his own vomit.

_Wait!_ Louis thought. _Sousuke… give me some time… please… I hope there's time. I'm starting to understand…._

(to be concluded…)


	15. Chapter 15: Edge of Hell

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Chapter 15

_Author's Note: Thanks to everybody that's stuck with me and my irregular releases. If you haven't reviewed yet, please do! Enjoy the last "real" chapter!_

----

"LOOK AT ME!" screamed the operation's boss. His maniacal voice seemed to dissolve all the sanity from the room, leaving nothing but a sickening sense of misplacement for anyone not bloodthirsty.

Louis looked back.

With a whooshing sound the man ripped the sheet away, leaving Ami stark naked in a fetal position on the floor. She uncharacteristically wailed in terror and embarrassment.

"No!" Louis shouted and looked away, gritting his teeth. The threats were terrifying, but somewhere inside it hadn't really hit Corbin until just now that he could very well be about to witness a violent sexual assault on an acquaintance by the most despicable man he'd ever met… and he'd be able to do nothing about it.

"Ahahahah! What did I tell you, Corbin?"

Louis heard the sound of liquid hitting the floor. He looked back to see a line of splattered blood next to Ami's bare figure. A stream of blood was also trickling down her chest, which she was covering with her arms.

----

There was silence in the room as Sagara stopped telling the story suddenly.

"…It would be better if I skipped the next section," said Sousuke.

Tessa was covering her mouth. "He never told us about this before."

"Who, Corbin?" asked Kaname.

"No, Sousuke." Mao responded airily.

"It was a highly unpleasant experience," he said. "I've seen violence in nearly every form, but this event left a very nauseating impression on me."

"Oh my gosh," Kaname gasped. "Did she get raped out in the open like that?"

Sousuke breathed out slowly and squeezed his eyes closed. Perhaps he was trying to force the memory out of his mind. "Essentially…, yes."

"…unbelievable." "Wow…" "That's… terrible." The girls were all floored by the statement.

"And he made you and Louis watch it?" Tessa asked slowly.

"I was still feigning unconsciousness at the time. I was only aware of what was generally happening based on the ramblings of the target."

"…I can't believe it. How disgusting…." Kaname stated.

"I will continue with the details omitted."

"…Okay…." The girls nodded, looking at him with shocked, intense eyes.

"The physical damage done to the woman was minimal. Corbin apparently kept his eyes fixed on the scene the rest of the time, so she was not cut again. However, I can't imagine the emotional damage that was done.

"The message that I had tried to get across to Corbin was that this man truly reveled in being hated. I wanted Corbin to look at his eyes to see this as I had. It was this fact that we ultimately used to defeat him.

"Despite the debacle before him, Corbin saw the potential, and began to pretend he was not appalled by the whole incident. How he managed this I have not yet understood.

"After he made it clear that he did not hate the target as much as the target would've expected, there was a dramatic shift in this terrorist's actions. The man became so blinded with anger at the fact that Corbin wasn't outwardly disgusted that the killer became erratic. It was then that we took action."

----

"No," he said, shaking violently. "I can't kill her. If I kill her it'll be over. How can I make him hate me? **How?**" The boss of the seeding operation began pacing back and forth, holding his forehead with one hand and waving his knife around furiously with the other.

Sousuke opened his eyes. The target was almost half a dozen meters from Ami. It was time. His eyes met Corbin's. Both men looked at each other with severity.

Sousuke reached down and removed his knife. In a flash he had thrown it and it skittered across the tile floor.

When it reached Corbin it was still moving quickly. Louis's boot stopped the knife at the grip in mid-slide, and it flipped up from the impact and went airborne. Corbin caught it at waist height about the time that the guards behind him were finding the triggers on their rifles.

The blade flew across the room with amazing speed, rotating twice. The operation's boss had only turned around for a split second before the knife sank deep into his neck to one side of his throat.

**Blam! Blam-blam-blam! Blam-blam-blam-blam!** Rifle fire continued for several seconds. Misted blood poured out of Corbin's chest as jacketed solid-point rifle ammunition penetrated his body armor in the back and created exit wounds in the front.

Sousuke dashed to the nearest cover. He was already behind the large reception counter some distance away by the time the two guards began to shoot at him. Bullets penetrated the counter only halfway.

Sagara remained there for a few seconds while slugs continued to pound away. The guards were clearly either overestimating their ability to penetrate or underestimating the thickness of the particle boards they were firing through. The firing stopped soon after, and Sousuke heard two magazines being ejected.

Vaulting the laminate-covered, chest-high counter in a single motion, Sousuke sprinted to the two guards while they dropped their rifles and un-holstered their side arms. The first guard was too slow, and Sagara's heel found his jaw quickly with a spinning aerial kick, which sent the man flying several feet before hitting the ground like a rag doll. The second guard raised his weapon and managed to fire a single shot which hit Sousuke's left arm and left a slight spray of blood in its wake.

Before he could manage another trigger pull, Sagara had caught the slide of the pistol and yanked the whole weapon behind his own shoulder while the man held on tightly. Having fully extended his opponent's arm, Sousuke bent down momentarily before smashing the heel of his palm into the guard's elbow from below. The joint snapped audibly and a piece of bloody, splintered bone emerged on the other side of the destroyed limb.

The pistol was released from the man's grip and tumbled once as it fell behind Sousuke's back. Sagara managed to get his own hand behind him and catch the weapon at about the time it fell past his lower back. Before the enemy could make another move, Sagara had fired two shots into his sternum. Stepping back, the SRT member delivered a shot to the head of the standing enemy, and then emptied the rest of the magazine into the torso of the other guard, who was on the floor struggling to get his bearings. Sousuke dropped the empty pistol.

Hearing sounds behind him, Sagara whirled around, but found only Ami scrambling over to Corbin. There was no time to confirm that Louis was dead, because there were probably a large number of guards coming up the stairs which were visible from here.

Sagara stopped moving for about half a second to decide on his next move. He looked around quickly and found only two viable entrances to the furnished reception area he was standing in. One was a large door marked "Fire exit" in the corner. The other was a hardwood set of stairs with glass and wood railings nearby.

Sousuke ran over to the other side of the room, wiping the remaining blood and vomit from his face and blinking several times to regain his balance. He picked up the two pistols that he had originally been armed with. He looked over at Ami, who was now nearly covered with Louis's and her own blood. Despite the contrast of her white skin to the bright red blood, she was apparently not mortally wounded.

Glancing at the original target proved in an instant that he was dead. There was a tremendous pool of blood. The knife lay next to him--he had removed it from his own neck. That was a foolish thing to do, because it only sped his blood loss and subsequent death. Sousuke would later find himself wishing that this man had taken several hours to die.

Jogging over to Ami, Sagara held out the silenced 9mm pistol grip-first. She surely noticed him, but didn't look up. She had a look on her face that combined every possible negative emotion into one unbelievably dismal expression.

"They might come through the fire exit. I'm going to the stairs over there." Sousuke stood still while waiting for her response.

Ami said nothing, but limply held out an arm to receive the weapon. She wasn't even in the presence of mind to cover her bloody chest any more.

When Sagara let go of the pistol, its weight brought Ami's arm down to the tile quickly. He couldn't do anything else but hope that no one used the fire exit, or else Ami would surely be killed.

Sousuke moved over to the guard that he had kicked to the floor. He took his pistol and subconsciously checked its caliber: .45.

The mood started to get to him for a moment. Seeing Louis shot so many times and seeing Ami's expression… it was sinking in.

…Corbin was dead. There wasn't really any question anymore. You didn't have to be a soldier in the Mithril SRT to tell if someone was no longer alive, and Ami's expression made it clear. The sheer number of rounds that had gone into him was stomach-turning. Sagara's tactical mind had reprimanded him after he had unloaded so many bullets needlessly into this guard's chest. He had wasted valuable ammunition. Perhaps he'd subconsciously done it as revenge for the brutal killing of Louis. Perhaps he just wasn't thinking clearly.

"Whatever." Sousuke said out loud. His own words snapped him out of his trance and he began walking over to the staircase. The dull voices of men were coming from below. Though he couldn't make out what they were saying, it was clear that there were a lot of men arguing. Sagara could surmise based on what Corbin had said that there were two or more terrorist groups downstairs. Most likely, one of the leaders was abandoning the operation under the assumption that the boss was dead. Another leader was probably arguing that they should go to where Sousuke was and confirm this.

Regardless of what was being said, gunfire started a few seconds later, and a lot of indiscernible noises followed.

Sagara prepared for the worst. Regardless of his odds of survival here, he could not seriously consider any other course of action. Escaping alone and leaving Ami was not an option. Escaping _with_ Ami seemed nearly impossible, at least in her current state.

The firefight downstairs was brief, but loud footsteps and shouting continued. In the midst of the noise and confusion, Sousuke focused on the task at hand.

The silver revolver slid out from behind his back and the .45 semi-automatic took its place.

_This is my job, _he thought.

Sagara's lower three fingers slid fully around the black rubber grip.

_I was sent here to clean up. That's what I'll do._

His thumb moved up, and then pushed down the small cylinder-release lever.

_My odds of survival…_ Sousuke stopped moving for a moment. _…are irrelevant._

Sousuke's index finger pushed gently on the opposite side of the cylinder, which rotated out smoothly, clicking into its open position and exposing the chambers.

_They'll come up this way._

The revolver tilted back. Four spent casings and two .357 cartridges fell into his other hand.

_Two bullets, plus the twelve on my belt. The other guard's pistol had nine rounds in it counting the one that hit me. There are probably nine in this one as well._

Sousuke dropped the four casings to the floor and pocketed the other two bullets. The sounds of these actions were unimportant relative to the chaos that was slowly rising to Sagara's floor.

_No way to easily access the M9 from here…._

From his belt he took one of the speed loaders and inserted the six arranged bullets into their chambers.

_No way to judge how many I'll be up against, either._

He turned the knob on the back of the loader and the six cartridges fell free.

_No cover nearby. Leaving this area sacrifices accuracy._

Using his other hand, Sousuke clicked the cylinder closed.

_This is a choke point._

Sousuke walked over to the glass barrier with a wooden rail topping it. He was looking over the staircase which led up as it led away from him. The enemy would be coming from directly below.

_Will the woman be alright?_ Sousuke began to turn around, but stopped. _No, I can't be concerned with that now._

Slowly, the noisy crescendo slid back into Sagara's consciousness. The footsteps collected below.

"Soko da. Soko!" It was Japanese. Whoever was shouting it wasn't a native speaker. Regardless, Sousuke understood it to mean "Over there!" They were probably pointing out the staircase.

A tense moment passed as Sousuke waited.

**Bam! Bam-bam-bam!** Some rifle fire came from below. They were shooting at the floor.

The men continued to shout in Japanese. "You idiot! Go up! Up!" Footsteps followed.

Sousuke's revolver's hammer came back slowly as he lined up the shot.

**Blam! **Glass shattered as the shot rang out

Gore from the headshot splattered the wood stairs. Hundreds of pieces of glass followed. There was hesitation from below for only a moment before more enemies ran up the stairs.

Rapid rifle fire ensued as three men unloaded their magazines while running up the stairs backwards. They were aiming right where Sousuke had been, only he wasn't there anymore. Tile and wood and glass turned to dust and splinters and shards as the floor was ripped apart. Shrapnel from the ceiling came down in sheets.

**Blam! Blam! … Blam! Blam!**

The three men fell one by one as they were hit from the side. One survived a single shot, but the second magnum round took him down. More glass bounced off of the stairs and the inclined railing.

Sousuke grabbed the small beestinger grenade from his belt and yanked the pin out with his teeth. He tossed the grenade underhanded, and it bounced off of the opposite wall before disappearing below.

**Pop! Crack-ack-ck-ack!**

The grenade detonated and rubber balls flew everywhere. The painful grunts of several men told Sousuke that it had worked at least somewhat. He flicked open the revolver cylinder and dumped the contents to the floor. Snatching the second speed loader from the belt, he loaded the weapon. While snapping the cylinder closed with another flick of the wrist, Sagara hopped over the railing and dropped down to the stairs.

He scanned the scene in midair and by the time he had landed he had removed the other pistol as well. Sousuke's feet hit the stair loudly.

Subsequent high-caliber pistol shots rang through the lower level.

**Blam! Boom! Blam! Boom-blam! BAM!**

The different sounds of the magnum and ACP shots were distinct. Sagara fired two shots into each man he saw. Once he had rotated his aim to the bottom stair near the wall, he found two men left with Lexan meter-high barriers struggling to shield themselves after being hit by the stinger from an exposed side.

**BAM-BAM-BAM!**

He fired both pistols simultaneously, hitting each shield three times. Neither weapon was powerful enough to penetrate. Tossing the revolver aside, Sousuke hopped down three stair steps in one bound and jumped to one side in the next. With this lateral momentum he sprung off of the wall and diagonally over the two standing men who had just started to fire.

Sousuke's relative speed to their firing angle was far too high, and they missed entirely. Sagara landed and fired the remaining three rounds in his semi-automatic into the back of the closest guard. As he fell forward onto the first stairs Sousuke slammed his fist into the side of the second guard who was turning around. The blow was powerful enough to stun the man, and Sagara successively grabbed his head and sent a knee into his face. Rifle and shield crumpled to the floor along with the final guard.

Seconds of anxiety passed, and tense silence turned into relieving silence. Sousuke took a few deep breaths.

----

"Whoa." Kaname said.

"To be honest, Sergeant, when you stated in your report how many terrorists were killed, I didn't believe you."

"Hahah…," Mao laughed. That little grenade really did it, huh?

Sousuke nodded. He appeared exhausted from his storytelling.

"Well," said Melissa matter-of-factly. "I know the rest of this story. I'm going back to bed."

"Okay," Kaname said.

"Affirmative," responded Sousuke.

"Very well," Tessa said.

Everyone sat silent for a moment. Mao disappeared into the bedroom.

A few seconds later, she called. "Tessaaaaa—!"

"Wh—?"

An arm appeared from behind the shoji. In the hand was a new, functional pair of handcuffs.

"Aww…." Tessa stood up and walked in that direction with her head hung. Before she entered the room she turned around and looked at Sousuke. "Good night, Sergeant."

Sousuke saluted. "Captain."

With that, the Captain grumbled incoherently and disappeared. The rattling of a handcuff chain was heard and the shoji slid closed. Mao's snoring followed less than a minute later.

"Heh," Kaname said quietly. "They sure went to bed fast."

"That is true," Sousuke stated without any particular emotion.

"So what happened then?"

"In brief, Ami had escaped by the time I went back upstairs. I had thought she was captured, but there was no evidence to support this. Even if I had assumed so, I couldn't very well go about rescuing her. In all probability the threat on her life had ended as the target was killed anyway."

"Hmm…."

"I was told later that a woman was seen leaving in one of the trucks we had rerouted. I believe Corbin may have told her how to escape in one of them while they were discussing her feigned death."

"…But he really died…? Louis, that is…."

"Yes. As is the fate of many fallen comrades, I had to leave his body there and escape on my own."

"…"

"The thought had occurred to me that he may have been happy to be reunited with his lost wife. Assuming, that is, that what he believed was true."

"Yeah…."

"It's not unusual for the response team to hear nothing of the mission once the combat is finished. This case was hardly an exception. I was extracted with the M9 less than an hour after escaping the building."

"You got out of the warehouse?"

"Yes. At that time there was little need for secrecy, so I simply left the building with ECS activated and contacted Mithril."

"What about your wound?"

"Oh, that was superficial. There wasn't any significant blood loss once I wrapped it."

Kaname's volume had gone down since the other two had gone to sleep. Now it was very low. She stood up and walked a little closer to Sagara. "Umm…"

Sagara's expression turned to confusion. "Y-yes…?"

Chidori looked off to one side. She may have been blushing, but it was too dark to tell. "Can I see it…?"

"…the scar?"

"…Yeah…."

After a moment, he responded "…Affirmative." Sagara lifted the sleeve of his simple t-shirt and looked past Kaname at the opposite wall as he felt her inspect him with her eyes. Something in his chest started to hurt a little. He wasn't sure what it was, so he just swallowed uncomfortably and tried to ignore it.

…The little tightness came back when he felt Chidori's warm finger touch his arm. He breathed in quickly and involuntarily.

He must've recoiled a bit, because Kaname backed up, startled. "Sorry! Sorry…."

"Uh…," Sousuke said. "…no, it's…." His voice trailed off and his sentence was left incomplete.

Several seconds passed.

"So…" Kaname said suddenly, turning around half way.

Sagara cleared his throat. "Yes, we should… get back to sleep."

"…Yeah." She turned and began walking to the bedroom. Sousuke walked towards his own.

"EEP!" Chidori made a high-pitched noise suddenly.

Sagara reached for his gun, found no such weapon on his person, but yelled anyway. "What is it, Chidori?"

Kaname breathed a sigh of relieved tension as she pointed. There was Tessa's silhouette on the other side of the paper wall… staring.

Sousuke looked back at her in confusion.

"It just scared, me alright? Geez." Kaname growled and walked briskly to the door, flinging it open.

After returning whatever blunt object he had frantically picked up to its original location, Sousuke could do naught but shake his head and walk into his own bedroom as the low chatter of the arguing girls continued. He found his gun right where he'd left it and began to slide under the bed, but soon remembered Chidori's and the Captain's command forbidding this. He uncomfortably slipped under the covers and lay face up, looking at the ceiling.

_They're carrying on as always. Did Corbin's death and Ami's abuse mean nothing?_ They weren't Sousuke's thoughts, exactly. It was as though someone was speaking to him inaudibly.

_What if they die, too?_ Sousuke swallowed uncomfortably and squeezed his eyes shut. The weird thoughts should go away soon.

A few moments passed. Sagara's eyes opened again slowly

It was a different voice this time…. _You won't let that happen, will you, Seven?_

…_I'm tired._ Sagara thought simply, and closed his eyes once more.

The little pain in his chest came back for no clear reason, and with it the memory of Kaname standing so close to him just moments before. Before Sousuke had time to question its meaning another time, the girls' chatter in the other room had ceased and with it Sousuke's will to remain awake ended.

(End of Shougeki)

----

_Ramblings from the author:_

_Well, that's the last official chapter. I am starting to work on the omakes today, so look forward to them._

_Shougeki was a lot more depressing than a lot of people probably expected. I guess I could apologize for that, but I did write the comedy, so give me a break. Hah..._

_I still can't believe I actually finished all three volumes. When I decided to do these about 14 months ago I guess I never really thought I'd actually finish it. More than that, I **definitely** never thought I'd get the kind of response I did from readers. It's so encouraging... thanks a lot, people!_

_Apart from the omakes, I don't currently have plans to write any more FMP fanfiction. I will instead be working on my original fiction named "Shell" which will be posted on fictionpress, fanfiction dot net's sister site. This will be a novel-length story following an originally normal but later enigmatic girl_._ It will be a story that blends pretty much every major genre out there. Primary genres would include romance, drama, and action. If you liked Wo Futari De or Shougeki you'd probably like Shell. Anyway, my profiles here on fanfiction and on fictionpress will keep you updated as to Shell's progress. I will start work on it once the omakes are done._

_Please do review if you haven't yet. Constructive criticism is always very much appreciated, but even if you just want to say "Liked the story." and that's it, it's better than nothing._

_In closing, and in hoping that I don't sound like a broken record, thanks very, very much to all the dedicated readers. It's been crazy amounts of fun writing this stuff._

_Thanks._

_ Esoteria_


	16. Omake

FMP Fanfiction

Shougeki

by Esoteria

Omake

_Author's Note: Expect the other two omakes in the not-so-near future. I officially start work on Shell as of now. I hope those of you who enjoyed my fanfiction will look forward to Shell as well. Be sure to check the profile for updates. Thanks to all readers and reviewers as always, and I hope you enjoy the Shougeki omake. ("omake" is Japanese for "extra" or "bonus")_

_Edit: Added a few lines to the ending to clarify the Corbin back-story. 12/20/06  
_

----

"Alright, Seven. Let's see what the new recruit can do." Louis Corbin was putting on some fingerless leather gloves. He stretched his fingers out and massaged his wrists.

"Is this necessary?" Sousuke asked.

"Yup. I need the practice. I told you I've been getting rusty." Corbin tossed his black wool jacket onto a folding metal chair in the corner. He began to hop up and down in a fight-ready stance. The fingerless gloves looked strange in contrast to the black dress shirt and slacks he was wearing.

"Very well. I won't be holding back."

"I don't expect you to, Seven."

Sousuke slowly took off his uniform jacket, revealing a white t-shirt.

"Better take our boots off, too." Corbin began to do so.

Sagara sighed in mild annoyance. Why did Louis suddenly want to spar hand-to-hand? He untied his boots and took them and his socks off, setting them aside.

When Sousuke looked up again, he was startled to find Corbin sprinting towards him with a grin on his face.

Louis left the ground with a great leap parallel that which he had used to hang from the second level of the parking deck a few nights ago. His head tucked forward and his legs separated into a scissor shape in his somersault.

**Whoosh-whoosh!** His heels came down with incredible speed.

Sousuke had dodged, and upon Corbin's landing Sagara counterattacked with the back of his fist. He sent it towards Louis's chest.

Corbin used his existing momentum to jump backwards and avoid the blow, but a follow-up jab came too fast.

"Ungh!" Louis stumbled back, holding his stomach painfully.

Sousuke stood ready.

Corbin coughed once. "Nice hit. Nice." He crouched down in a split second and leapt off of the floor once again.

**Swish! Swish!** Sousuke leaned back as far as he could to avoid the two spinning kicks directed at his head.

Louis touched down with one foot and spun again even faster, moving towards Sagara in midair.

**Foosh!** Sousuke lost his balance and fell to the floor from the dodge. _He's not kidding around…._

Corbin was in the air again and coming down with his fist out in an attempt to hit Sousuke on the ground. Sagara rolled out of the way quickly and got back to his feet.

"Are you fighting or performing?" Sousuke said with more than a hint of anger.

Louis charged once again. He delivered three quick blows towards Sagara's upper chest, all of which were deflected to one side or the other. Corbin jumped back. "I have no chance of beating you with sheer tactics and simple maneuvers."

Sagara took the offensive and rushed. He stooped down on his final step and attempted to hit Louis with his knee as he jumped upward. Corbin jumped back a few more steps. He looked back to see that he was about to be pushed against a corner of two concrete walls.

"Occasional confusion is one thing," Sagara said, breathing audibly. "But what you're doing is just a waste of energy."

"We'll see," said Louis.

Sousuke moved forward again and threw several punches. Louis dodged or deflected them all but was soon up against the wall.

"Trapped?" Corbin said with a grin. "Or was I planning this?" He jumped straight up again and put out a heel towards Sousuke. Sagara caught his foot but was pushed back as Louis sprung off.

Corbin was then about five feet in the air and pushed off of one wall to the other side of the corner. He then pushed off from the adjacent wall as well to commence another attack on the stunned Sagara.

The roundhouse kick nailed Sousuke in the back and sent him face-first into the wall. He pushed away, growling. _Fighting without weapons… this is ridiculous._

Louis ran forward and attempted a strong thrust punch, assuming Sagara was still stunned from hitting the wall, but Sousuke grabbed his outstretched arm with both hands and swung him into the wall he'd just come from.

**Smack!** Corbin hit the wall hard, and fell to the floor….

A few seconds passed with Louis holding his hand over his face.

"…**Augh!**" He yelled at last. "That _really_ hurt."

Sagara turned away in irritation and began to walk over to his shoes. "We're currently far too violent and emotional for this to be called sparring."

Corbin groaned in pain again. "You're right, Seven. We're not getting anything out of this."

Sousuke stopped dead in his tracks. "You…"

Louis was walking towards his own coat and boots. "I what?"

Sagara turned around slowly. "You had this planned from the start."

Corbin said nothing, but sat down and began putting his boots back on.

"I can't believe I've not learned by now. You were trying to get me angry in a fight. You were testing me… again."

"Don't be angry, Seven. I really did need the practice."

"A significant ulterior motive."

"There are good reasons for me making sure you can hold your own in close-quarters combat… without losing your head."

"So I failed, then? What now?"

"Hardly."

"Forgive me for saying that this all seems a little ridiculous."

"I'm not trying to patronize you, Seven. I just want to make sure I'm not going to get us both killed."

"There are easier ways to avoid that."

"…"

"…But you don't intend to use any of them."

"Tell me something, Seven."

"I'm not in the mood." Sousuke finished lacing his boots and put on his uniform jacket.

"Did you join Mithril because you like the job… or because it's all you think you can do?"

"…"

"…There's nothing wrong with fighting on the right side, you know. Don't let anyone tell you you're someone you're not."

Sagara's expression was one of mixed irritation and thoughtfulness. He made no indication that he would respond to Louis.

"…I just don't want you to make the same mistakes I did. Call it a last request."

Sousuke tasted the full sourness of the words. He looked Louis in the eyes. "Excuse my coarseness… but don't burden me with such things."

Sagara walked through the firing range curtain and into the stairwell.

"Don't blame you," Louis said to himself quietly.

----

When his footing gave out under the rushing water, Louis let go immediately. He couldn't let her fall back down here.

"Louis!" she screamed as he fell the few feet into the foaming seawater and went under quickly.

Corbin re-appeared a few seconds later gasping for air. "Go!" he yelled. "I'll get out another way!"

She didn't budge. Louis started to panic. This was the classical situation. Too bad he'd never wondered what he'd do if he were actually the doomed protagonist in some action-romance movie.

"Go! I'm not giving up! I'll be out there with you, just go _right now!_" He screamed the last two words as loud as he could.

She jumped slightly and then nodded. There were probably tears in her eyes but there wasn't much chance of telling with as much water as was on her. She turned and began to scramble up the incline.

_They just don't make ships like they used to_, Corbin thought while taking a huge breath and going underwater.

It was supposed to be a toss-back to old luxury ships. Well, the guy who owned it—dead now—had enough money to have it built exactly to historic specification. Unfortunately the luxury ship it was modeled after also sank.

While Louis fought the raging current which tossed him left and right and back and forth, he wondered how many people were going to survive this. Hopefully they wouldn't shoot the one girl who was definitely innocent. How was he supposed to know the daughter of this crime lord was on the ship at the time?

_Nothing ever goes to plan._ Corbin thought. Just then, the flooded deck caved in and Louis, the wood flooring, and a whole lot of water fell into part of the large hull which had apparently remained dry and empty until this point. He had the presence of mind to take another gasp of air when it all came down. Debris and the sheer weight of the water removed all of his sense of direction.

After being thrown around for what felt like almost a minute, his arm and shoulder smacked against something hard.

When Corbin opened his eyes again a large piece of wood was headed straight for him, moving a lot faster than the rest of the water he was fighting. He managed to move to one side in enough time to avoid being impaled or at least knocked unconscious. Looking around briefly, he discovered he was near one end of the ship. The round underside of the large boat ramped upward and inward to a point where some floorboard damaged by the explosives might lead to the deck—a possible escape route… and probably the only one if it was.

He grabbed onto the nearest rib-like support at the bottom of the hull. He was regretting it a few moments later as he occasionally was smacked roughly against the side with the turbulent current. Fully aware that his oxygen was nearly gone, Louis swam from one rib support to the next. The water level was rising in the same direction as he swam forward and up.

By the time he had reached the top of the section, the hull was completely flooded.

_Heck! If it's filled with water down here the air has to be going somewhere! Where?_

Corbin's question was answered a short moment later as he clearly heard cracking wood behind him. There was a hole not quite large enough to fit through in one dark corner of the deck above. Louis wildly flung his hands around him, searching for a pocket of air. Miraculously he found one after flailing only briefly, and he breathed a huge breath as soon as his mouth and nose were clear of the salty water. His inhaling breath was unfortunately about as large as the pocket of air, so he had no time to relax.

Corbin swam over to where he had heard the cracking wood and began pulling at the broken boards, hoping to make a larger hole.

_Dang! Freaking! Stupid! Board! Gah! _He mentally shouted substituted curse words and general terms of annoyance. Eventually the boards came apart under his effort. One of the larger ones actually came off entirely and clipped his leg painfully as it slid down to the bottom of the hull.

With his hole completed, Corbin had to muster considerable strength to squeeze through against the suction. Once he was on top of the new level he found himself on the bridge rather than outside the boat.

_That would explain the somewhat flimsy floor,_ he thought.

Louis was trying hard to make out which windows were broken out enough that he could swim through without slicing into some vital organ.

While trying to determine which to go through, the large boat suddenly rolled to one side and the bridge was entirely sideways within a few seconds.

_This must mean it's about to go down really fast, _Corbin thought. _How far from the ocean floor are we anyway? Maybe I could hold out until it hits bottom and then swim out? Do I have time for that?_

Regardless of whether the feat was possible, Louis didn't like the idea of hanging around in a sinking ship any longer than he had to. A few dead guys were here in the bridge with him. They had probably been killed by shrapnel from the first explosion.

A stray piece of wood which was floating down from the vessel's pitch and roll gave Louis an idea. He grabbed the plank and kicked hard, swimming with it towards the topmost window. Like a small battering ram, Corbin pushed out piece after piece of reinforced glass. He found himself cursing the reinforcement idea. Sure, a rock or bird flying into it under normal conditions wouldn't shatter it, but didn't anybody consider that one might have to get _out_ this way?

Repeated thrusting took enough glass out of the window that Louis was prepared to attempt a swim out.

He had cleanly swum halfway up when the boat began to roll again. Corbin's legs escaped with minor cuts and he found himself very near the surface of the water as the ship rolled underneath him. He scrambled up with the turning frame and managed to stand up on the capsized vessel. Just as he was breathing fresh air, the ship sank a foot or two in less than an equivalent number of seconds. And at that same moment, Corbin's watch began to beep loudly.

As though it could've meant anything else, Louis brought his arm to above the surface and looked at the watch. Countdown was at 5.

_Ohhhh man…_

It was time to start running. The explosives Corbin had set were fully capable of going off underwater. And he just happened to be on the side where the explosions would start.

Louis sloshed through the waist-deep water, getting as much traction on the smooth hull as he could. The boat wasn't sinking quite as fast anymore, so he was entirely above water in short order. It was about then that the first bomb went off.

**Pff—Bdoooom!**

A tremendously low-pitched and torso-shaking sound was followed by a geyser and shrapnel behind Corbin where the bridge had been. Louis sprinted across the hull as fast as he could.

With the new inlet for water to flood, the ship pointed downward, giving Louis an uphill climb.

**Pff! Bdoooosh!**

One of the planks Corbin was running on came flying off from the next explosion. He landed a few seconds later further down the hull and continued his upward scramble.

"_Why_ do I always have to cut these things so close?" Louis shouted in despair.

**BLAM!**

The third explosion was above water. Pieces of wood flew by Corbin, and one slower-moving one hit him square in the back. He lost his balance and stumbled towards the end of the capsized boat.

**BOOM!**

The final bomb went off and Corbin was almost directly above it. Before he knew it he was twenty or thirty feet above sea level, uselessly flailing his arms and legs about as though it would gain him any aerial control. He happened to look to one side and see the girl he'd just gone through all of this to save. She was running down the beach, watching him fly through the air with a terrified expression on her face.

_Something about all of this is quite comical, _Louis said to himself.

**Smack!** A piece of debris from the explosion hit him in the back of the head and Corbin went unconscious instantly.

----

Everything was a dark sort of shade of blue. _Did I drown?_

…_My back hurts._

…_Ohhh, that sun is so warm. This definitely isn't underwater._

Louis tried to move his fingers.

…_Sand…well… I don't think there's any sand in heaven… guess I'm alive._

"Louis…?"

It was like the voice of… well… one of those really pretty things… _Yeah… they had a name… oh well._

"Louis… you're alive right…? Don't make me worry any more…."

Corbin tried to move his mouth to respond. But about the time he was managing to separate his lips…

_Ohhh… so soft… these hands…._ There were warm hands on either side of his face, touching him gently.

_I need to open my eyes. But… this might be a dream._

"Louis… you promised me you'd make it…."

_I did? Oh yeah… I did. Hey, I'm not quite dead…. I feel fine, actually… except for my back._

Louis felt a warm leg slide over his… then there was a pleasant weight on top of him. He felt a soft chest with medium-sized breasts lower onto his.

_Oh, God… should I be resisting this?_

The softest, warmest, most spectacular and best-tasting lips in the entire world sealed over Corbin's, the likes of which he would never once take for granted. His mind went completely blank. He felt like he was melting into the sand… or whatever he was laying on.

"I know you're alive Louis…," the silky voice spoke again. "Thank you for saving me."

_Hey… didn't I just kill her father? …Guess he wasn't much of a dad. Wait, never mind that, she just... And… wow._

"Rest now…."

----

Stiffness, back pain, and that really annoying feeling of having a film of salt on one's skin awoke Corbin some time later. The red color coming through his eyelids told him it was about sunset.

_Am I still on the beach? Nobody shot me…. Hey… where is… she?_

Louis forced his eyes open. He saw lots of broken pieces of wood from the ship being washed ashore. He looked west and saw the sun making its way down. Then he looked east.

"Hi."

Louis jumped in surprise. "Whoa!"

There she was, sitting with her knees up to her chest, looking at the ocean. "Sorry, did I scare you?" She didn't seem willing to look at him.

"You sure seem… a lot more shy than you were a while ago."

"What do you mean?"

"…When you…"

She looked at him with a confused expression.

_Did I dream that? Something fishy is going on here…. _"N… never mind."

"Don't say anything about what happened on the boat. I knew everything my father was doing… and I'm glad it's over."

"I'm sor—"

"Don't."

"…Okay."

There were several moments of silence.

"…"

"…"

"…I love you," the girl said suddenly.

"…What?" Louis thought she was kidding. He coughed loudly. "I don't even know your name!"

"…I love you. Marry me."

----

A smile crept onto Corbin's face. _Why am I remembering this now?_

He put on his coat and started to walk towards the curtain.

_You were so different back then... but that part of you never really went away either. Funny thing... I actually did marry you._

There was a long, drawn out sigh that echoed through the parking deck.

…_I miss you. I'll be with you soon._

Louis pushed the cloth aside and stepped through, out of the firing range.


End file.
